The beauty of realising one's dream is also this: to see it grow in your head, to see it turn into something that will not always correspond to reality but that is OK, because reality will be even better. In imagination there are doubts and limitations that we impose on ourselves, even when we seem to be dreaming big. In reality, on the other hand, we manage to overcome them and surpass ourselves, perhaps through force majeure, perhaps with the push of a friend, a professor, family, or whoever believed in us before ourselves.
Nevertheless, more hours were spent daydreaming than actually preparing for my master's degree. I spent months imagining what might await me on the other side of the ocean, and the moment of graduation was a constant. I could see myself wearing that Columbia blue, complete with the typical ceremony hat that is only for those who are celebrating that milestone. I even wondered who would speak at my ceremony and especially who would be at my side in those last moments as a student. Of course I was also thinking about what I would wear, but that is another story.
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Eventually that day actually came, last May. And as anticipated, the reality exceeded all expectations.
A few weeks earlier I had picked up the light blue dress at the university bookstore (on the last possible day with just an hour to go before closing time). The house where I lived on the Upper West Side was only a 15 minute walk away, which with the rush I was in to try on the dress became about ten. With mum live on FaceTime, I threw everything on the bed and opened the package containing the gown, the hat and the tassel, which is that ornament that hangs from one side of the hat. On graduation day, tradition dictates that the graduate moves it from left to right, to signal that he or she has earned the right to the new title. It is also the symbolic shift from one phase of one's life to another. The tassel fits into the hat and that's it.
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17 May was sunny but cool. A perfect day that instead of lasting 24 hours felt like a handful of minutes. I found myself walking towards our esplanade with fellow travellers, those who had faced the same challenges and with whom I celebrated each victory. I listened to the ceremony moved, waving towards the sky the newspaper that each of my companions held in their hands to make it clear that we were the school of journalism (it is a tradition at Columbia that each school has a distinctive sign: flags, letters or inflatable animals, symbols). I sang “Empire State of Mind” at the top of my lungs with a heavenly sea when Dean Bollinger announced that we were graduates of Columbia University, now and forever. I celebrated when in the evening, the Empire State Building glowed our blue. Through that symbol, all of New York greeted us and wished us luck.
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I always struggle to find non-trivial words for people who ask me what it was like to graduate from Columbia. All the years of sacrifices, the efforts, the daydreams suddenly made sense.
Photo by Camilla Alcini
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