Good gravy, it’s been a long time since I’ve written here. Too long. Obviously, a lot has gone down in the past half year. I mean, heck, I did up a semester of school, graduated, went to Florida, got a job, quit a job, and started writing this here entry. Now I’m not going to lie, there’s a ton of stuff that deserves its own post, so we’ll see what we can do with this whole thing.
It would appear as if the major thing that I should talk about (since it happened first) was the whole last semester of school thing. And yep, that makes a lot of sense, but let’s just say it was legit and move on from that to graduation. That’s actually a confined bit of time that I can talk about fairly easily… even though it was two months ago now. Craziness.
Anyways, so the whole process itself was absurdly informal. To register for the event, all you had to do was mail in a small card with your name on it and the degree you were to receive. And when I say “degree,” I don’t mean specifics like “marketing” or “international business,” I mean “bachelor of science in business.” That’s it. So since all of us Carlson cats were already together for the ceremony (as in each “school” at the U of M has their own ceremony – one for Carlson, one for IT, one for CLA, etc.), there was basically no separation at all (due to the fact that we all graduate with the BSB in business). What does that mean, you ask? Well, it means that there’s really no organization at all when it comes the thing.
But before we get to that, let’s hold up a minute and talk about the specs of the day. Seating was based on a “first come, first served” basis. And what that meant was that you could bring any number of guests you wanted to the thing… as long as you found a place to sit. So with that, that pretty much meant that my whole family was invited. Cool. Obviously, my mom and dad (whom I affectionately for whatever reason know as “Larry”) were going to come (to make matters easier, the ceremony was on a Monday, which was convenient for Larry since that’s, you know, his day off. Not going to lie, though, I found it to be super-weird that this thing was going down on a Monday. I mean, what an odd day. You have to imagine that a lot of parents were less-than-pleased about that. *shrugs*). But we also got my grandma (i.e. my dad’s mom, known from here on as “Grandma”) and her daughter/my dad’s sister (“Auntie” for the remainder of the post). On top of that, my mom’s parents (that is, my grandparents who will be known as “Grandpa Ron” and “Grandma Dee”) attended as well. AND to finish it all off, my awesome sister (Amy) and her husband/my brother-in-law Paul were able to make it as well. Totaled all up, I had 8 guests coming to this dealy!
But given the Landin knack for punctuality, I knew that finding seating wasn’t going to be an issue at all. That’s something that’s been instilled in me for basically my entire life. I always remember any time that we had to go to my grandparents’ house for church or anything, we’d give ourselves an extra 15 minutes of leeway time. And by that I mean that it took about 30 minutes to get to their place, so we’d always give ourselves 45. And when it came to the actual act of leaving itself, when my dad said that we were going to roll out at say 8:15 in the morning, that meant that we were pulling out of the driveway at 8:15, not exiting the house.
I absolutely love the fact that that’s so ingrained in me. I mean, let’s be honest here, how friggin’ hard is it to be on time somewhere? All right, if you’re going to a party or some sort of thing like that, then yeah, don’t be on time, but if you’re going to church, or meeting someone for lunch, or anything of that sort, then c’mon, be on time. The following idea just sort of goes along with that and is something that I think Joyce Meyer (who’s a preacher) has said before… I think she said it anyway. Either way, Larry’s quoted it a couple times moderately recently. The concept is something along the lines of “How can people expect miracles and such in their lives when they can’t even show up on time to church?” Now maybe that’s a bit crass (and quite possibly something that I just shouldn’t say in general), but think about it. Makes a bit of sense, doesn’t it? Be on time.
Anyways, so yeah, I wasn’t worried about the timing issue at all. The ceremony was supposed to start at 1:00 with doors opening at like 12:30 or something… so what did that mean? Well, it meant that my family was going to be at my place in Minneapolis by 11:00. Of course, though, they showed up early :p I believe Amy and Paul rolled up a full ten minutes early, with Mom, Larry, Grandma, and Auntie (who all drove up together) not too far behind (we were going to meet Grandma Dee and Grandpa Ron at Northrop Auditorium, which is the building where this whole thing was going down at around noon).
I was just in the final stages of getting my tie rocked when I got the call from Amy. “We’re here.” Solid. I meandered down the steps to let them in. Obviously, we were only able to chat briefly before the rest of the Landin crew appeared and we were able to get on our way. I snagged my cap, gown, and tassel, and we began our walk toward campus. Of course, though, there were plenty of pictures throughout the whole process… especially from Grandma.
Another ongoing tradition in the Landin household was that my grandma would always pay us 10 cents for every picture of us she would take. Now I know what you’re thinking, that’s odd. And you’re right. I don’t exactly remember the origin of this thing, but I think it simply had to do with the fact that Grandma used to take what would seem like TONS of pics of Amy and I in hopes of finding the perfect one for her yearly Christmas card. Pretty sure we (and by “we” I probably mean “me;” I’m assuming anyway, I’m not actually sure) just got tired of the whole process after like 6 or so pictures every time. So Grandma decided to start bribing us for pics. Even as a stupid kid, I knew that was a great deal. And just as another weird aside, she also used to pay us a dime for each time we pooped at her house. Now I have NO idea where that came as an idea, but again, I was cool with it. Eventually, we’d save up all these dimes and go rock some garage sales and buy all sorts of useless but cool stuff with our plethora of dimes. Ah, what a simpler age that was.
So of course, even though I’m 22 and Amy is 24, Grandma still promised to pay us for the pictures. And just so you know, I’m pretty sure she mailed me a dollar recently for the whole thing. Gosh, I could go on and on about how awesome she is. You know what, I think I will. So with that said, here’s a list of some cool stuff she does/did (in no particular order).
1. Played poker with us as kids. We used to gamble with potato chips.
2. Brought us candy to eat while at church (I remember one instance where I spilled a bag of M&M’s all over the hard, tiled floor – hilarious).
3. Let us play in her kitchen sink with toys we’d bring from home/buy at garage sales.
4. To this day at meals always has a microwave pizza for both Amy and I (on top of whatever the actual meal is).
5. Played softball with us in her yard.
6. When I was younger one year I wrote up a big stupid list of impossible items for Santa to bring me one Christmas Eve (Amy and I always stayed at her place that night). The last thing I wrote was, “And a silver bell from your sleigh.” Obviously, I didn’t get any of the random videogames and other crap I asked for, but dag-nabbed if there wasn’t a small silver bell for me the next day. Awesome.
Gosh, I could go on and on about how fantastic she is, but I think I’ll end by saying that as far as a person goes in general, she’s my role model. To me, she’s pretty much everything someone should be, and when I think of the term “Christian,” I think of her. I’ll never forget the time that we all helped Amy first move into her apartment in Willmar. There were a couple of what appeared to be Somali women outside the building as we unpacked Amy’s gear. Darn near everyone on the planet would just mind themselves and let everyone do their own thing, but Grandma walked right up to them and started talking to them about how there was a church service available in their language and all sorts of other related stuffs. At the time, my 16 (or so) year-old self just wanted my grandma to back away, but now that I’m a bit more knowledgeable, I realize just how amazing that was. Straight-up, cold evangelism. I love it. Who knows what kind of difference that little conversation could’ve made in either of those people’s lives?
Moving on, so with the picture taking mostly complete, Grandma decided to comment on what I was wearing that day. I didn’t think too much of it; it was just my black dress pants, a black collared shirt, and a black and white tie. It just seemed like graduation-appropriate attire to me. But she mentioned that that tie had been my grandpa’s, and that it was really cool that I was wearing it (not her exact words, but you know what I mean). Now people can say what they want, but I don’t think wearing that thing was accident. I fought back a little tear as I agreed with her. Heck, I’m fighting back a little tear as I type this now.
Now I’m not somebody who cries. Ever. Frig, it’s literally been years, probably even over a decade since I’ve legitimately cried, but everyone once in a great while, something will move me to the point where I might shed a single tear. Never sad, though, always something amazing. Speaking of which (gosh, I’m going deep with this post – far deeper than I thought I was going to, but you know, it’s been months since I’ve written, so I probably owe my readers the good stuff, right? :p), the proudest I think I’ve ever been in my life was moments after I was confirmed my freshman year of high school.
The confirmation service was always put on by the confirmands (i.e. the kids who were getting confirmed), and for whatever reason, I was chosen to give part of the sermon. My topic to speak on was Isaiah 49:1/Isaiah 43:1. The verses in question basically say the same thing: “I have called you by name, you are mine.” Undoubtedly, just like I was at 16, my 15 year-old self really didn’t have a great grasp on what was going on with them. So Larry helped me write the whole thing up, and I’m going to be honest with you, I think it was pretty good (cool enough, I still have the original copy of what was written sitting in my home in Olivia).
Apparently, though, some people really liked it. Now after the service was complete, we all stood at the back of the church and shook hands with the people as they left. Fairly standard procedure. No doubt that a lot of people said some really nice words, but the one thing that really stands out to me was when one gentleman shook my hand, looked me in the eye, and said “Your grandfather would be very proud of you.” I thanked him as best I could while I tried to maintain my composure and not lose it right there. Now I have no idea who that guy was who spoke to me that day, but he’s had more effect on me than he’ll ever know. I know I’ll meet him again some day, though.
But that’s enough almost tears for a little while, isn’t it? Let’s get back to the story. It wasn’t too long before we completed our walk (like 20 or so minutes) to Northrop in order to start rocking everything down. Grandpa Ron and Grandma Dee had already called my mom and told her that they were there waiting (perhaps Landin punctuality extends to the Erpeldings as well?). Money. We quickly found them just chilling inside the building upon our arrival. At this point it couldn’t have been past noon at all, so we all just chilled for a bit before I decided that I should probably try to find where the lining up and everything was to occur.
So I excused myself from the family and wandered back outside to see what was going on. After about 5 minutes, I found the line where it was all to go down. There were a couple of tables just sitting out there where kids had lined up. I quickly found out that all we were doing there was picking up the little card that we’d mailed in a few weeks ago. That was it. No organization beyond that. By this point, though, my buddy Faraaz, who now that I think about it, was probably the first real friend I really made on campus, showed up. We talked it up as more people I knew started to surround me. It wasn’t too long before a bunch of my favorite Carlson people had found me. Kyle, Josh, Dominick, Jason, Patrick, and probably a few more were all around as we tried to figure out exactly what was going on here.
Shortly into everything, we heard someone tell us to start lining up. Apparently, the whole thing wasn’t going to be alphabetical at all, you just lined up. Josh and I looked at each other and decided why not be first? Someone had to be, why not us? So we took our place at the front as I texted Amy to let her know that I was going to be coming out right away. We all continued chilling for a bit as everyone else lined up until we were called to rock. We followed some nice lady inside Northrop under the strict directions that we were NOT to sit down once we got inside. Seriously, she told us this like ten times. Probably a good thing, though, since Josh (who was legit first) still almost sat down once we got inside.
The actual ceremony itself was pretty standard fare. I honestly don’t really remember anything from what was said. But I do recall that as we were standing in Northrop waiting to sit down, one of my teachers (Wayne) walked in front of Josh and me on his way to his position at the front of the stage and commented “Front and center. Just like you should be.” That was a fairly generic comment that he probably would’ve said to anyone he’d taught who happened to be in our spot, but it still meant something to me.
Heck, one of the best presentations I’ve ever given was in his class. The topic for our spiel was a case study about reorganizing the sales force at FedEx, and due to an awesome set of circumstances I was assigned by my group to the intro portion of it. This was pretty much because of the fact that our group met on a Saturday to hash out some of the details of it and figure out what everyone was going to talk about. For some reason that I can’t remember, I went home that weekend, so I couldn’t make the meeting. So that basically de facto’ed me in as the intro guy since it only made sense that they wouldn’t want to put me in as doing an in-depth portion of the presentation because they’d want to go over that with me right then and there at the meeting.
That made my job pretty easy. And if you’ve been reading my blog for any period of time, you know how much I love presentations and how I’m actually oddly good at them. So this was going to be cake. Come gameday, I was definitely ready to rock. Now one cool thing about Wayne’s class was that he always had the non-presenting people in the room right down all sorts of comments about the actual presentations of that day. In the end there were probably like 20 or so evaluations of our group and at least ¾ of them mentioned my part as being pretty darn fine. One person even went so far as to say that it was “EPIC.” Yeah. EPIC. All caps.
Anyways, that’s enough tooting my own horn and being a shill/tool for myself. Let’s get back to the matter hand. Which of course is not remembering what the actual ceremony was about. Some people said some stuff. That’s all I really got for you. How about we just fast-forward to the calling of the names. You know, like when we walk across the stage to get our diploma holders and then subsequently wait 6-8 weeks for the actual paper to arrive.
We went up one row at a time to the stage where we were to pass our name cards to one woman who would then pass them to another woman. This second woman had the microphone and announced us as we walked across the aforementioned stage, shook someone’s hand, and then exited (during this whole process, there were a couple of people hired to take our picture as well – I’m still waiting for my dimes from them :p). Pretty unofficial process, but darn simple and efficient. As I stood waiting to walk across, I noticed my advisor Brooke was the lady telling everyone to put their tassels off to the “graduated” side. I said “Hi,” and gave a big smile to her as I walked up to the increasingly often mentioned stage.
Looking back I’m really thankful for having Brooke as an advisor. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories from people who had some bad experiences with people in that position, and I can honestly say that she was awesome. Super-nice, very helpful, and extremely personable. I actually looked forward to meeting with her. Bank.
I handed the first lady my card as I Josh and I watched as someone in a wheelchair went across the stage first. Darn. We weren’t going to be at the top, but nonetheless, it was still cool. *shrugs* Immediately after, Josh strolled off to get his diploma holder, and then so did I. I feel like I might’ve hesitated a bit before walking since I wasn’t exactly sure when we were supposed to move, but I can’t say that for sure. The whole thing went off without a hitch at all. I think back to the little graduation ceremony thing in Spain where I awkwardly clinked glasses with my Econ teacher and I realize that in some situations if people don’t have anything to remember you by, that’s a good thing.
This was one of those things. I didn’t fist pump, drop into the splits, dance, or do anything ridiculous (although, part of me still wishes I would have) as I walked. If you’re doing it right, people will oftentimes wonder if you’re doing anything at all. Sometimes, that’s the thing to shoot for. Act professional and as if you’ve been there before.
I quickly got back to my seat and started rocking the waiting game until everyone had been through. As I sat there I marveled at how few people I actually knew in Carlson. Probably only around 15-18% of the peeps. I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising, but nonetheless, that was interesting to me. I didn’t think about that for too long, though, since before a ridiculous amount of time, it was over. We all stood up, turned to the audience, some threw their caps, and headed out. I talked to some of my friends briefly before locating the fam among the throngs of people exiting Northrop.
We headed off to a side location and proceeded to take a bunch of pictures. Now I’ve already talked a bit about Grandma, but let me mention the Erpeldings in this context as well. Especially Grandpa Ron. Sometimes I wonder if he has dreams of being a professional photographer. I can remember many a time where he’d line us all up and position us just so for what had to be 10+ minutes in order to get the perfect screenshot of everyone. Maybe he should’ve paid us dimes too! :p
Thankfully, he wasn’t like that at all this time as he just took normal pictures like everyone else. Granted, we all took a lot of pics, so I’m sure he’s got the perfect shot in their somewhere. Heck, the pictures are of the Landin/Erpelding Clan; they’re all probably stellar :p
But that was it right there. Grandpa Ron and Grandma Dee headed back to Willmar, and the rest of us hit up Amy and Paul’s place to hangout with their awesome cat Cora for a while. Oh gosh, here’s another reason that you know Grandma (and Auntie) is (are) a (-) fantastic person (people): Cora went right up to them and just straight chilled there. It’s like she knew that they were cat people (and just amazing in general). I’m telling you, the animals are always the first to know :p
And as a sidenote, all the props for the actual graduation pics go to Amy! And I want to give a general shout-out/thanks to her, Paul, Mom, Larry, Grandma, Auntie, Grandpa Ron, and Grandma Dee for coming to the ceremony and just being awesome peeps on the whole!
