Graduation, Schmaduation: Why everyone needs to take a triple dose of chill pills

I won't sugar coat anything: graduating from the University of Toronto was the most anticlimactic anticlimax of my 23 year long life. Most of my friends had graduated according to plan in June of 2013. But I, having switched my major four times and dropping a truly astonishing number of courses, opted for the ol' fifth year.

For whatever reason, this information was never updated on the Trinity College Listserv, meaning that I missed receiving every single important email pertaining to setting myself free from our beloved university. Because of this computational kerfuffle, I missed the deadline to request graduation, barely made it to grad photos, and received no invitation to the delightfully snooty reception that Trin puts on for grads and their family, which is a shame because I heard that my friend's grandmother knocked over the multi-tiered champagne flute pyramid. Man, did I miss out.

All this being said, it would have been difficult for me to make it to the soirée as I had moved to Germany for the summer. My parents were surprisingly bummed that they would not see me cross the Con Hall stage, and I suffered from severe FOMO for about five minutes before I realized: why do I give a toot about pomp and tradition? Sure, had I been in town it would have been great to attend my graduation, but regardless of my presence at the ceremony, I would graduate.

If a fifth year's name is called in Convocation Hall and that student isn't present to hear it, do they still graduate? Spoiler alert - they do.

This wasn't the only unnecessary freak-out that I had the summer after my U of T finale. In some ways, I can't be too hard on myself because leaving the comfortable bubble of undergrad is a stressful thing. Yet a common and irrational thread ran through all of my episodes: I imagined that something happening in a certain way was important, and subsequently lost my shit.

In the haze of preparing for my big move to North Carolina, where I would be starting grad school, I realized that I knew zip about sports. I briefly went bananas, trying to find a way around the equation of American University + Athletic Arrogance = No Friends. How would I finagle my way through American football culture? Following U of T tradition, I never once attended a Varsity sports game during my undergrad. The closest I ever got to sports was the legendary Conversat Bowl of 2009.

I believe it was in the driver's seat of my 14-foot U-Haul that I fabricated another predicament, in which I convinced myself that I shouldn't be going to grad school at all. Surely, within the first week of classes, I would be found out to be an imposter! How had I tricked this programme into accepting me? What kind of fake-history-PHD-wizardry had I pulled out of my ass to make them think that I was worth a single white-house-embossed nickel?

But I had cast no confundus charm on the admissions department, and there was no future-defining friendship algorithm. People, especially the type-A folk that run rampant at Trinity College (a group to which I very much belonged), have ideas in their heads about the way that things are supposed to happen. They have designed their lives around situations that are entirely imagined and that, much of the time, won't unfold as planned. But, to put it eloquently, everyone needs to calm the f%*@ down, because everything will work out. Just look at me - after a whole week of grad school, no one has figured out that I know nothing about football, and in spite of this calamitous obstacle, I've even made a couple friends.