And ... Degreed

"Back where I come from we have universities, seats of great learning -- where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts -- and with no more brains than you have.... But! They have one thing you haven't got! A diploma!"

Three years ago I walked into a guy's office to convince him to let me walk into his office for three years so that he could tell his bosses to give me a piece of paper. Last Sunday, that guy gave me that piece of paper. I still have it. It's right in front of me on top of a file cabinet.


Graduation was long and tedious, and I didn't even go to all of it. I was warned off of morning festivities with the whole school on "the Lawn". From what I heard from people who went, the warnings were on point. I had to sit for 2 1/2 hours in an airconditioned theater, listening to Bob Chapel reading off the names and bios of each drama undergrad and grad, and I was still bored. I sat next to my man, John Foresman, who was the technical director for my last two shows. He's got a job for a year as the assistant technical director at Cincinnati's Playhouse in the Park, the theatre I grew up going to. We made faces at each other. Every once and awhile John would flash me his program as if to say, "The 'M's'! We're only up to the 'M's'!"

But anyway, graduation is not really for us. It's for our parents and our faculty to feel a sense of achievement and closure, and that's not a bad thing. For me, it feels more like an opening ... as in a wound, as in, "Gee, I guess that good thing is done. I guess I don't get to do well-funded theatre with cute coeds anymore." ... Not that it was about the coeds ... It was about the Art ... The coeds were purely incidental ... but also cute ... Mmmmm, cute coeds ...


Anyway, now when I'm on the side of the road, broke and holding up a sign saying, "Will interpret Shakespeare for food", if people call me a bum I can say, "Hell no! I'm not a bum. I have a degree. That makes me an unfortunate, thank you very much! What? Which way to the Best Buy? Well some people go this way, and some people go that way ..."