Graduation Weekend Recap

Guys! Graduation weekend was the best. Gah. I feel so loved. Let’s jump in!

Last Wednesday, I overpacked (way, way overpacked because the weather looked so variable) and then my mom and I went to go get our nails done. I considered an obnoxiously bright pink and then remembered that French manicures are my thing.

I told this story on my Instagram stories, but just so it’s somewhere permanent, I’ll tell it here, too. As a kid, I truly believed I would grow up to have French manicure nails. Like, natural French manicure nails. Don’t get me wrong, my nails are good and strong, but they’re not as shiny as top coat nail polish and the tips are nowhere near the bright white they are when they’re painted. So, while sometimes I’m feeling moody and dark or super bright and I’ll go for color on my nails, I often stick with French manicures because it’s an easy way to make it feel like my childhood dreams came true.

Then, after finishing packing, we drove to Chicago. We got there just in time for me to observe the yoga class I needed to finish my teacher training (it was excellent!), and then there was ice cream from Kilwins (duh) and bedtime.

Thursday

My mom and I headed downtown to look at mattresses while my dad went to go play poker. Yes, we have mattresses in Columbus. However, you can only test Caspers and Purples in a few cities. Please tell me if I should get a different mattress, but I hate my parents’ mattress so that’s not an option, these get great reviews, and online stuff is easy. But yeah, my mom wanted me to test them first, so I did. I’d also love to test an Avocado (how can I not like an avocado???), but I’d have to go to New Jersey for that, and that’s kinda not in the plan.

I took my mom to Doc B’s for lunch, and it was deeeelicious.

We split a mountain of sweet potato chips with a smaller mountain of guacamole and a burger with Swiss, arugula, and avocado.

After a quick walk to Water Tower Place to get my eyebrows done and shop for a bit, we took an Uber to the UChicago bookstore to buy some gifts and update our own UChicago clothes. Then, it was time to go rest in the hotel. Or… that was the plan. When I had changed into my comfy clothes and sat on the bed, my mom pointed out that it was supposed to rain all day on Friday. My intention had been to do my senior pictures on campus in the morning golden hour because college campuses are dead in the morning and I wouldn’t have to feel watched while I was getting my picture taken.

But, being the flexible person that I am (you should be laughing now), I offered to get my hair and makeup photo-ready at 5pm, change into my graduation dress, and freeze for pictures on what I assumed would be a busy campus. My mom, naturally, took me up on the offer.

It was windy, so my hair was a pain. I was freaking cold because the dress and the gown were pretty light. But somehow, the campus was pretty dead, so that was a plus.

{Those are Ehlers-Danlos hands if I ever saw ’em.}

{I feel like this is a face Serena van der Woodsen would make in a picture? That wasn’t intentional, but my legs look long – that was intentional – so here it is.}

I can’t see it anymore, but I know that in several of the better pictures, I was half-glaring at my mom through laughter, thanks to various modeling requests she made. Those pictures were better because there was actual emotion in my eyes and not just forced smiling through cold/discomfort… even if the emotion was annoyance. 

Also, I love my dress, but it makes picture-taking hard because unless I arrange the sleeves very intentionally (which I did), it looks like I have four arms because of the slit from shoulder to wrist. Whatevs. It worked!

After the pictures, my dad picked us up from campus, we all changed into warmer clothes, and we headed to Roti for dinner. Roti needs to come to Columbus. So. Freaking. Yummy.

We watched the Capitals win the Stanley Cup and called it a night.

Friday

It was rainy and gross in the morning as predicted. It cleared up by noonish and we walked to Whole Foods for lunch, but mostly we spent the day playing cards and reading. My aunt, uncle, cousins, great-uncle, John, and grandparents came into town that day, too. My aunt and uncle took my cousins to explore Chicago, while my grandparents and great-uncle came to the hotel to hang with us.

My grandparents and John wanted to go to a nice Chicago dinner, so we got reservations at Fig & Olive. It was truly, completely, excellent. I have exactly zero pictures because it was so dark, but let me tell you all about it. And then you should go, ASAP.

None of us are huge champagne people, but we started with a delicious, dry champagne because… something about celebrating me. We also got a cold seafood platter and crostini to share. The seafood platter had shrimp, lobster, and oysters. Turns out, oysters are the one seafood I can totally live without. I like mussels and scallops and all that, but oysters are a class of their own. That is, they taste like slimy seawater to me. I had a gulp of champagne to get the taste out of my mouth. But we got smoked salmon, shrimp, and marinated steak crostini. They’re tiny, so we each had half of one, and they were delicious!

Our waiter was lovely and also suggested we split the fig and olive salad. I still hate olives, but the rest of the salad was fantastic, fresh, and not too heavily dressed.

Between us, we ordered the paella noir (paella with squid ink rice), the filet mignon, the branzino for two, the riviera salmon, and the Chilean sea bass for entrees, and no one had any complaints. My sea bass was freaking phenomenal, and while I’m still not totally clear on what sunchokes are, they were delicious.

With the help of our knowledgeable and patient waiter, John ordered us two red wines to compare and contrast, one from Napa and one from France. I think we uniformly preferred the French one, but it was probably the first time I’ve done a side-by-side wine comparison, so that was interesting.

Though we didn’t really need dessert, we kiiiiind of needed dessert. We split the bruleed cheesecake, chocolate obsession, and dessert crostini. My faves were a tie between the chocolate obsession (because chocolate) and dessert crostini (because delicious and interesting). I also tried a sip of John’s port, and while it wasn’t as gross as I remember port… it wasn’t my favorite thing ever.

Ugh, Chicago. You’ve never given me a bad meal, and this was one of the best.

Saturday

So, I slept horrifically on Friday night, and every hour when I was up I checked the weather. Y’all, it had changed 28543 times in the last week, but that night, it was consistent. Basically, it was supposed to rain all morning. I got up around 5:00 to squeeze in a quick workout and a short treadmill walk, got ready, and fretted about the weather with my fam. See, I have no desire to sit outside for two hours in the rain. None. And funnily enough, neither does my family.

I called it around 7:00. I said we should just watch the livestream of morning convocation and try to go to my hall ceremony in the afternoon.

For reference, UChicago holds one big ceremony in the morning where they confer degrees for all the grad students and undergrads, do the honorary degrees, and have the main speech. Then, in the afternoon, the undergrad dorms all have their own ceremonies and the grad students go off with their respective schools for more intimate ceremonies. This is also where the undergrads walk across the stage like in high school.

My aunt and uncle came to the hotel with my cousins and my grandparents and John all came up to our suite to watch the morning ceremony on laptops. It was honestly quite boring, and it would’ve been miserable to sit there under ponchos and umbrellas.

Everyone was glad we were inside. With a little time left in the morning ceremony, I fixed my hair and put on my dress and gown. Then, we caught the shuttle from the hotel to campus and I joined the line for my hall ceremony and caught up with a bunch of people in my house I hadn’t seen for over a year.

They told me it was smart to skip the morning festivities because it’d been gross and wet. It then started to rain lightly (we were mostly protected by standing under trees), and I thought I’d made a huge mistake in coming for that ceremony. Fortunately, it cleared up within a few minutes, and halfway through our ceremony, it was hot to be sitting there all close to each other wearing all black.

And then I walked across the stage and hugged one of my RHs, snapped a picture with my diploma holder (I now have two because they gave me an empty one at this ceremony and mailed me one in December), and saw my other RH and his kids before frantically trying to figure out how I was supposed to get back to my seat.

It was a mercifully short ceremony – just under an hour – and then it was time to snap family pics, show my aunt and uncle around the open parts of the main quad, and head back to the hotel.

{I felt like such a slacker during the ceremony when there were triple majors and I did a lowly one. But when I told my adviser that, she said unless there was something else I felt passionate about, I should just stick with the one I had. I  econ. Also, it feels lame that my school doesn’t do Latin honors. One of our student speakers made the point that UChicago students don’t receive many trophies for their accomplishments, and that feels like it’d be an easy bone to throw us.}

By the time we got back to the hotel, I was 100% ready to not be in my dress anymore, so I slipped on a new UChicago sweatshirt and shorts and played cards with my aunt, mom, and cousins until it was time to get ready for the party that night. Getting ready basically involved taking the food up to the room.

We had a taco bar, guacamole bar, veggie tray, and cookies from Summer House Santa Monica, and it was all fantastic. That is all. We also have leftovers for the week because there was so much food.

Susie, Alex, and Emmie came to visit us, and my family enjoyed meeting them and, frankly, having a baby around again. It’s been 7 years since Mason was that little!

They’ll be the BEST excuse to go back to Chicago. I’m so going to miss my Chicago fam.

As they headed out to get Emmie to bed, I picked up one of my friends from UChicago in the lobby and we caught up till… whenever, since she’s moving to NYC for work. And then everyone left, my parents and I cleaned up, and it was time to pack and go to bed again.

Sunday

Easy-peasy. We drove back home, I snuggled my pup, and then I went off to my last yoga teacher training class. I had too many feelings at yoga and had to cry and get hugs before I could teach. I stayed up too late watching my mom edit pictures. The end to suuuuch a great weekend. The biggest thank you to everyone who was part of it!

Your turn:

What was the weather like when you graduated college? I mean, I’m glad it wasn’t a million degrees, like it has been the last couple years…

What was the best thing you ate this weekend?