Graduation Part 1 “Now why am I doing this?”

My whole graduate career I kept asking myself “Now just why am I doing this?”  I won’t find a job in my educational path.  In a time when churches are barely able to support full-time pastors, I am spending bookoo dollars in a field that cannot support me.  Then I straighten up and push my heavily-endowed chest out and proclaim “it was on my bucket list; that’s why!”

This past weekend was my graduation and once again kept asking myself “Now why am I doing this?”  I decided long ago I would walk.  I missed my undergrad graduation because I graduated during the summer and graduation was held on the sister campus (a campus I never set foot on).  So I wanted to walk for this one.  My school email box was full of graduation announcements inviting me to parties with the President and flyers with graduation weekend events and notes about when to pick up certain things.  Our plan was to start driving on Monday or Tuesday heading toward Virginia. 

I started this program the Spring semester of 2008.  If you look at my transcripts, you’ll notice a slight (okay, rather large) absence of time.  I call this “Life Happens.”  Several of my babies were either in college or going away to college and I sort of had a meltdown.  In 2010 I wrote to my advisor and asked if I had been kicked out of the program.  The Registrar told her to tell me to get my butt (maybe not his exact words, butt but, that was probably what he was thinking!!) registered for the upcoming semester or I would definitely have to reapply.

So how fitting that a “life happens” event effected our travel plans.  A beautiful soul of the church passed away and the children wanted her service to be on Wednesday (of my graduation week).  Hubby made reservations and we were set to leave our little airport and head to Richmond, VA in plenty of time for me to pick up my regalia before the Thursday 4 p.m. deadline.  While waiting to go to the airport I receive a text from the airline saying our flight was delayed and we would miss the connecting flight so they had moved us to the next flight but no flights would be leaving after we arrived.  That meant we would have to spend the night in Dallas.  Hello, hotels.com; please book 2 rooms for the Strawberry gang.

So off we go on Wednesday evening to our little airport.  Once we checked our baggage and were cleared by TSA, we sat at the little café and ate dinner and waited for boarding time.   

We live in the land of mañana but even I thought “Wow, not too many people here and it’s almost boarding time.”  Did I mention it takes me a while to get jokes or plane reservations being cancelled?

Well here’s the deal, if you make reservations on places such as hotels.com, there is a money-back guarantee until about 4 p.m. the day you make the reservations.  They don’t give you your money back if the damn airline cancels your flight at 6 p.m!  Picture Strawberry taking 2 $100.00 bills and flushing them down the toilet because folks, I lost my money at the American Airlines slot machine.  I complained. It didn’t help. Hotels.com had the nicest customer service rep helping me. She made us feel so good even though she didn’t do a damn thing for us. 

Where, O where is our luggage, American Air? Oh, where, oh where could they be?

We found our suitcases at the baggage area and headed home and set our alarms for 2 a.m. because we needed to be at the airport at 3 to check luggage and go through the security check and (hopefully this time) board at 4:30 a.m. for our 5 a.m. flight.

Now why am I doing this again?