It's officially over: I will be graduating from HEC in June.
You might have thought that would be a done deal, since I finished my last class a month ago. Time was, I thought so too. For all I know, maybe it was. But immediately after I finished that last exam in April, I had the rotten luck to run into a well meaning but overzealous administrator who proceeded to give me an unwanted pep talk. I am almost certain she meant to be encouraging, but all she really did was make me think it'd be just short of a miracle if I ever got my diploma. I wrote a rather long entry explaining the story behind the story here. But having just re-read it, I think it's a bit dirty-laundryish for me to explain everything. Besides, I probably was worrying a lot more about the whole issue than I really needed to. But there is a reason for that, rational or not.
The whole uncertainty issue really cast a cloud over my last week or so in Paris (which admittedly wouldn't have been a very happy time in any case - long goodbyes are tough) and made me ponder the possibility that the past three years could end up being a dead loss. Happily, they weren't. But how uncool is it that the possibility ever even existed? Perhaps because I was dealing with this whole thing for so long, I still haven't really gotten over my panic about it all. I actually received the good news yesterday afternoon, but opted not to share it on here just in case I got another e-mail saying there had been a mistake. Yeah, I know, paranoid...trust me, you probably would be too!
Graduation is in June, but I won't be attending. I don't have the money or the time to get back to France, and I also find I really don't want to go. You'd think the happy ending would make me want to go back and indulge a bit, and I'm actually kind of surprised that I don't feel that way, but I definitely don't. The bad side of the whole thing is still pretty raw in my memory, and will be for a while. I wouldn't wish the past six months or so of my life on my worst enemy, and I certainly don't care to celebrate anything about them just now!
Since the ending was a good one, I am sure that the whole episode will come to be nothing worse than a memory of a rough time that I survived and a reminder of why one should never give up. To some degree, that's already happening: while moving back from Luxembourg to Paris in February, I stopped at a lovely little hotel in Verdun. It was wonderfully quiet, there was a dusting of snow on the ground and no traffic anywhere, the lobby was quaint and pleasant looking, the desk clerk looked shocked when I handed him my American passport and told me my French was terrific, and the room was as cheap as it was cozy. I knew as I drifted off to sleep that the idyllic and quiet setting amidst all the nastiness in my life right then made for a great turning point - maybe the worst was over. I know now that it was! But it's too fresh in my mind for me to want to bother with graduation.
Certainly, though, I do appreciate the offer.
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