If you’re like me, your social media feeds are filled with joyous celebration photos from high school graduations and college commencements across the country. This is the season of endings and beginnings.
Last year we had the former. This year we have the latter. All this pomp and circumstance has me contemplating the differences between graduation and commencement, “with all the honors, privileges, and responsibilities thereto appertaining.”
Merriam-Webster says “graduation” is “the award or acceptance of an academic degree or diploma” while “commencement” is “the ceremonies or the day for conferring degrees or diplomas.” Either way, it seems degrees are involved, according to Merriam and Webster.
Technically, the words are synonymous and therefore interchangeable. However, “commence” also means “to have or make a beginning, start.” That’s the chief difference between the two in my mind.
Graduation marks the end of high school. Commencement marks the beginning of a career.
I know that graduation from high school can be the beginning of college or a job and that commencement can be the end of college, but for me, the associations are graduation equals end and commencement equals beginning.
That’s how it has played out for us. Last year when our middle son, Harris, walked across the platform at Parkview High School, it very much felt like the end. He was saying “goodbye” to high school friends, marching band, mock trial and living at home.
Harris recently concluded his first year at Mercer and that was an amazing beginning to his college experience. He was named Mercer’s outstanding freshman, competed in intercollegiate Mock Trial and worked in the Center for Career and Professional Development. But at the time he was handed his Parkview diploma after delivering one of the speeches, we didn’t know any of that was in store.
Wwen our oldest finished at Parkview, it was the end of a great high school career. Graduation similarly ended Barron’s high school marching band experience, which was his signature extra curricular activity. Watching him lead the band as drum major for two years was a dream come true for him and for us.
Georgia’s Commencement on May 10 officially ended Barron’s marching band career, which included serving as Kennesaw State’s drum major for the one season COVID robbed them of football and playing trumpet at back-to-back national championship wins for the Dawgs. But the entire day of his Commencement from his college’s convocation in the afternoon to the big ceremony that night, we all felt like he was celebrating a new beginning.
Barron will be working in the UGA Office of University Architects beginning in June, and unlike some college graduates who have trouble landing that first job, (me included) he received his diploma with a job already in place.
In three short years we’ll be celebrating high school graduation with our youngest, Carlton, and another college commencement with Harris. I’m sure I will look at these ceremonies again with fresh eyes, and we will be confronting a new set of endings and beginnings.
I think it’s most important with each of these milestones for all of my boys that I stay in the moment and take in the experience. Both ceremonies are special and deserve my utmost attention.
So if you find yourself in a folding chair or the stadium bleachers this graduation and commencement season, and you are contemplating what it all means, I think you should savor the endings and anticipate the beginnings. It all goes by so fast.
New South Essays 