This photo was taken at my college graduation.
At the time, I thought graduation meant certainty.
I thought the hard part was over. That adulthood would arrive fully formed. That college had been about accomplishment, friendship, independence, maybe even reinvention.
I didn’t understand yet that so much of college is really about becoming someone before you have language for who that person actually is.
You spend years trying on versions of yourself.
Some fit.
Some don’t.
Some survive only because the people around you expect them to.
And some quietly follow you for decades before you finally understand what they meant.
Mother’s Day always makes me think about transitions like that.
The people who packed the car, worried from afar, answered late-night calls, and somehow let us become ourselves without knowing exactly who we’d turn into.
College graduation feels similar. An ending that doesn’t really feel like an ending yet. More like standing in sunlight at the edge of something you don’t understand.
That feeling found its way into Line & Verse long before I realized I was writing about it.
So today felt like the right day to revisit the Graduation Chapter from Freshman Year.
For anyone graduating. Missing someone. Looking backward. Or simply wondering how so much time passed so quickly.
For readers of Line & Verse, you may recognize where some of these feelings eventually found their way into fiction.
And if you’ve been following Ethan back to Westmore in Sophomore Year:
Funny how becoming never really stops.
Further Reading
I keep a running collection of books that shaped this project on Bookshop.org.
Purchases there support independent bookstores—and help sustain this work.
If you prefer to read on your Kindle, you can purchase Line & Verse, Book 1 from Amazon. Paid Subscribers can also download a copy of the eBook version here.
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