So I graduated. I realize now – sorry, Lawrentians – that I probably could have figured out a way to get up there for tonight, etc., but it's too late, I'm already in B-town. Congrats to all of you, or at least those of you I like, and be sure to remember I exist if you have a moment.

The ceremony was blarg. There were no hoods or colors for anyone except the honorary degree recipients, the speaker was some professor who's apparently giving the same "UChicago is useful" speech at all four commencements, and when I got up one of those shiftless Ph.D. students swiped my refreshing Sprite. Never trust a man in a velvet outfit.

Basically, I realized today that the LU commencement ceremony is nothing short of spectacular in comparison.

The coolest part of the UChicago program was our long procession to the quad, accompanied by bagpipe music. Of course, even here, Lawrence's approach is superior: you walk through a congratulatory gauntlet of professors to get to your seat.

As you can probably guess, I never did end up appreciating the solemnity of the occasion. As I tried to explain to my dad – the only family member who could make it – the day I turned in the thesis was the Big Day for me. This was more of a formality, the reason I'm not hanging around here for another week.

I felt odd seeing so many people, everyone from MAPH faculty to casual acquaintances to the Strategist (who may have earned the same shorthand descriptor I often used to explain Graham while at Lawrence), and knowing not only that I probably won't see them again, but also that there'll be no Big Goodbyes.

Mere fondness doesn't justify more than a cursory wave or a last handshake, and then, blip, this person is out of my life. (Albeit not my RSS reader.)

And with people like the Strategist, people who I actually hung out with and had meaningful conversations with – what's that movie where the guy is going away for ever and they pretend like he's just going to the store? That was a bad plan.

Yet this all felt appropriate. Maybe I'm just regretting my own failed or insufficient social efforts?

About a year ago I tried to devise a mental list of potential friendships, lost. My top five favorite people I never really got to know: depressing.

Or it might not be that at all. This wasn't a bad year. I was happy there, content. I went out, had fun, studied, learned new and useful things, and wrote a thesis I'm still somewhat proud of. Maybe, all the excitement of the Cities notwithstanding, I'm really feeling nervous about leaving Chicago and starting over again, albeit not from scratch.

My apartment was my home. Who else, after all, cooked all those meals, or decorated the walls for once, or decided that in this house, we could leave the toaster plugged in? Setting up in a new place and a new city is always an onerous task, no matter how ridiculously dull the Chicago suburb you're leaving.

Mainly it sucks because of the moving process, but it's partially the knowledge that I'm leaving the familiar sociol geography of a place behind. In this case, the Maph landscape, formed in social hours and get-togethers elsewhere, is not only irrelevant but destroyed.

I played my part in the deterraforming this morning. It took my dad and I a few hours to load everything into his truck and a rented trailer... my connection to Chicago is for the most part dissolved.

Ten hours later, I'm home. It's strange to have nothing to do, no looming tests or term papers, no projects or goals except those I set for myself. There's little I can predict, even – I only know where I'm living through August.

This is the vast expanse beyond school, the long-awaited Future. And finally I understand what Graham's mom meant when she observed that, when you think about it, we're living in the future right now.