Hooding Weekend

And this ends a journey, from August 1989 (first day of Kindergarten) to 2001 (high school graduation) to 2005 (OSU graduation) to May 9, 2008. Nineteen full years of being a student all culminating in one ceremony where you change what you've done for the vast majority of your life and switch it to a productive career. It will be fulfilling to finally stop racking up huge bills and start paying them off, and to do what I enjoy every day as some class schedules are nothing but training. But in the end, graduation is a ceremony for families to enjoy and celebrate one of their own and their accomplishments.

Wednesday after my last final ever, Kelley and I went to Melting Pot. We had an awesome dinner and the special dessert of the month was Bananas Foster which was different and good, but not the same as their more chocolate-y dishes. So Thursday when Kathy got in, we finished our goodwill runs and then went to Melting Pot for chocolate. It was good stuff, and we had a server who was one year away from applying to OSU law school. Good luck buddy.

I actually had trouble sleeping due to a little excitement. Hard to believe, but you don't get many celebrations like this one. We wake up bright and early and get down to Palace Theatre for the Honors Convocation. Looking over the list of awards, I thought I was definitely getting a useless certificate for the top grade in Legal Writing (the better part of that award was the nice Black's Law Dictionary we got over a year ago), but I had no idea if anything else. I knew I was in the running for one of the top Appellate Advocacy briefs, and I thought I was almost a lock for the top student in Intellectual Property coursework. Then follows one of the longest 1.5 hours in my life, as countless awards and pieces of paper get handed out. As it turns out, I had forgotten my volunteer time for Moritz Ambassadors (admissions office) 1L-2L years, so I got a certificate for that as well as the Legal Writing. No AppAd award, but I was thrilled to see Larry take home a Top 3 finish. Also did not get the IP award, which went to Bart and Steve. I knew I was screwed when Professor Lee said the award was going to two people who survived all four of his IP classes (which means they did not take patent law 2L year and so I guess all of us who were truly interested in patent law got the shaft on that one). But let's face it, they are all cute little certificates that don't mean a ton and they should be spread around to the most people possible. the cutest moment was when Keener went up to accept an award and his little kid yelled out "Daddy!" when he was accepting the award midstage (Keener smiled and waved out to him). The best moment outside of Larry's award was definitely the big AK taking home a nice plaque for a prestigious award (the name of which escapes me now). We escaped the convocation and went over to a little pizza place to blow the brunch hour. The place was dead, which was just fine. Once we got closer to noon, we trekked back to the car to get the cap, gown, and hood.

Met up with Mom and Steve and Bruce at the Theatre, then walked around back to go to the graduation staging area. We then gathered over 200 people in the hottest little "hospitality suite." You can imagine what the biggest room in the back of a theatre looks like, and it's not that huge. Eventually we line up down a very long hallway leading to the ceremony, where we proceed to stand in alphabetical order for way too long. The highlight was greeting OSU President E. Gordon Gee on his way into the ceremony. That guy is amazing for the university (again) and is a vast improvement over that bitch Holbrook. More waiting, and then we got to finally go in. I couldn't find my family thanks to the ridiculous amount of waving families out there, so whatever. Got to the seat and in for the long haul.

To start us off, Brian Smith showed off some outstanding pipes in the National Anthem. He should really consider singing because those are his gifts, but whatever. The higlights of the ceremony were definitely the speeches. E. Gordon Gee gave a nice little rousing speech, and then at the end he says "you all have a great day" and walks off the stage. Exit stage left. I guess he had some more important things to attend to, but it was definitely funny watching him just leave the building. Professor Oesterle got best professor award, and he gave a nice speech making fun of a lot of the more interesting aspects of our class. He especially bashed on Alexis which was funny yet surprising. Then Phil Eckenrode gave the student speech and it was absolutely fantastic. I knew he would knock it out of the park. The LLM student wasn't that bad either. The only real downer was the infamous Brewer speech, which failed on its softer moments and ended with an unforgiveable disaster (NEVER EVER end a speech "Class of XXXX, We Did It!" at a law school graduation after Legally Blonde...that's just plain jane and overdone). Maybe I'm jaded, but you know what it's over and who cares at this point the exploits of Smith, Miller, Seifert, and Brewer. We are all moving into our careers and let the firms or government deal with the various personalities. The top 25% stood up for recognition, and a lot of surprises in that lot. Top 10% was pretty expected though, and I'm happy to have my name in the graduation booklet for that (even though that's only for 5 out of 6 semesters). Got the hood fro Oesterle and that was that. Took some pictures in the super-crowded theatre and alley outside before returning the cap and gown and running off for dinner.

The 8 of us (James, Dad, Mom, Steve, Kathy, Bruce, and Kelley and I) went to Logan's Steakhouse and I got a big steak for celebratory dinner. I received a nice OSU watch and an OSU clock for the office as well as other small nifty nick-nacks. My Dad is getting me some nice diploma and bar admission frames. The usual nice take for graduation. After going home and relaxing for a bit, Dad and James came over and we actually got some four-player Rock Band going. I never would have thought my Dad would play drums and sing, but we rocked it out for a couple hours. Then we finally got to bed and man was I exhausted. Between the finals and the prep for moving and graduation, I was already beat before the real moving began.

Sunday we packed up the big new TV and sound system as well as the spare bed and covered it all with plastic (it was raining of course) and finally hit the road for Cincinnati after 8 PM. We got in and unloaded in the rain and dark, then put the bed together. Another restless night of sleep and off to my first day of work the next day. This leads us to the move, but we must wrap up the law school entries here before getting into that (which will be later as there's much more to catch up on and not enough time tonight to write).

So law school. Over $100K in debt that I did not have, but I have a very lucrative job close enough to OSU football, right in town with my favorite baseball team, and close enough to family for them to reasonably visit and us to reciprocate. I think I will be tons happier as a patent lawyer than I ever would have been as an engineer...and I'll make a lot more money doing it (a nice bonus on top of the most important thing, happiness). I accomplished everything and more of what I set out to do as a student, including nothing lower than an A up through high school, high school valedictorian, summa cum laude in Mechanical Engineering, and top 10% in law school. Those things are nice and they sure make my Mom and Dad proud, you can just see it in their eyes as they were grinning more on the day of Hooding than I've ever remembered seeing them. But I just hope I can translate the successes of my past life (and make no mistake, it is now the past life) into professional success and success as a father and husband. That's where the road of life leads now, and I can only hope to have as good a time as I had the past three years, despite the hard grind that is law school.

Thanks to all the friends and sometimes foes who made law school entertaining and somewhat life-consuming. I'll miss most of you as only a handful are moving to Cincinnati, and we'll catch up whenever we can. Thanks also to all the readers, who have survived the much-too-long breaks and given supporting (or disagreeing and not-so-supporting) feedback. I will continue to write as the scary world of being an associate, passing the bar exam, and becoming a father come up on my horizon.

In all things there is an end and a beginning, and while we look back sadly at the days long lost, we must dwell on the bright future that those days in the past have paved the way for.

Or in the words of a character I admire, we journey through life "to boldly go where no one has gone before."