Take a Bow

Let me begin by thanking Scott, Lucy, Randy, and Sheryl for their help yesterday. Without them, the party that followed my graduation ceremony could not have gone anywhere nearly as smoothly and a relatively hectic and busy day would have been infinitely more chaotic and stressful. Of course, that is pretty much the theme of the achievement that I’m celebrating—to paraphrase the Beatles, I got by with a little help from my friends.

I know it is the standard cliche…“blah blah couldn’t have done it without my friends and family blah blah,” but nothing could be more literally true than that. Each and every one of you—all family by varying definitions—played an integral part in the creation of this achievement, and you should all be proud. Everyone suffered; my poor, beleaguered children bore the brunt of five years of me being tired, distracted, stressed, and busy, and they did it while finding countless ways to ease our collective burden for example. My wife walked into this relationship IN THE MIDDLE of all of the stress, looked around, and said, “Yeah, why not, I’m in.” Next time you are mistakenly thinking your significant other is the best, remember that Ger not only tolerates all that goes into the hot mess that is me, not only does she tolerate that all at my absolute ball-of-stress worst, but she does it without ever having seen me at my now-we-can-relax best1.

All of you have been amazing though. Each one of you that has, for years, gone out of your way to make your schedules fit my lunacy. All of you who have braved my calendar’s oppressive, colorful, and packed pages in order to set up dinner plans or a meeting for an event. Those among you who have dealt with cranky Jer, tired Jer, not-entirely-coherent Jer, and finding-his-stress-relief-at-the-expense-of-strangers-in-social-situations Jer because, in theory, there’s a fun to be around Jer somewhere in the mix too—despite the growing infrequency of his appearances.

Let me not ignore the fact that many of you have at times shown support in tangible ways too! Some of you have helped bridge financial gaps, been a sounding board when I wanted to pull heads off others, or have just been a set of helping hands when the number of balls I have kept in the air2 proved to be a few too many for even me.

So I mean it when I say that you should all pat yourself on the back, because all I did was the homework3, you guys made a college graduate. Congratulations. Now…about these student loans…

 


1 We are making several assumptions here, of course: I am capable of relaxing, relaxed me is actually better, and of course that relaxation is in my plans.
2 <Jer> tag.
3 And make no mistake, I did a LOT of homework. And tests. And notes. And studying. Well, maybe not the last one.