If no one has ever graduated from SCAD, let me just say, do it. Go to the school, graduate from it. You’ll love it.

Commencement alone is a party, and everywhere I go, when I say I’ve graduated from SCAD, faces morph into Edvard Munch’s The Scream, or they whoop like you’ve just announced their name as the winner of a lottery jackpot.

SCAD commencement features confetti, musical dance numbers, and whirling lights rivaling (and you can quote me on this) any Tony award-winning Broadway musical. Except, instead of the stage, we are the spectacle, sitting there in our caps and gowns wearing cords, tassels, and hoods. Walking trophies as family cheers from the stadium seating. Oh, and they gave us these light-up batons with ribbon streamers to wave, flogging the air in celebration of our academic milestones and achievements¹.

If you haven’t been to Great Wolfe Lodge, I recommend doing it. It’s a fantastic, family-friendly getaway at a compound in the middle of nowhere with a huge indoor water park, one swimming pool, activities like mining for gems, food options equivalent to that of your standard local food court, and screaming kids everywhere accompanying very tired and fed-up parents trying to check into a themed resort room intended for no fewer than twelve children and all living generations of adults from their family they showed up with.

We were really out of place in our party of three.

Anyway, my husband and I took our ten-year-old daughter there about two weeks ago. We thought it would be the perfect activity to punctuate a year where our rising fifth grader survived a return to prep school from another school that may as well have had the goats from their garden teaching courses. We were thrilled she finished this school year with a GPA higher than 0.23². So we figured, why not celebrate mine and my daughter’s end of school terms at a facility catering to toddlers?

At the end of our first night there, we went to the lodge’s only real restaurant. One where you could actually sit and enjoy a meal that didn’t come on a cafeteria tray, or inside of a pizza box. We ordered from a bound menu, sipping fruity drinks while taking in a spectacular view of the resort’s lobby wishing we’d gone to Jamiaca as bajillions of kids in their pjs gathered and danced to “Baby Shark” (this is entirely true) around an enormous fireplace, blissful and strangely elevated as though they were at Woodstock ’69. It was a sight to behold as all of the servers began clapping and chanting a happy birthday cheer to the table next to us, crowning the birthday girl with a set of fuzzy wolf ears.

At the end of the chant, our server turned to us with a Cheshire Cat grin and asked, “Are you all celebrating anything special with us this weekend?”

To my daughter and husband’s horror, I said with all of my tequila-induced might, “Yes! Graduation!”

“Oh, who graduated?”

I don’t know why, but my impulse in that moment was to vent.

I never got used to being at SCAD, or being a student again for that matter. Not that the art-lined halls and shiny interiors meant nothing, but going back to school in my forties required reacquainting myself with the collegiate environment—twenty years after receiving my bachelor’s degree and nearly fifteen years into my professional career. What in the hell was I doing back at school, and why?

For perspective, I was sitting in an undergrad journalism class at Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida, when the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

The following weekend, I had to be on a plane to Washington D.C. for a football game. I was a cheerleader for my college. An activity I participated in more for the skirt and the twerking in front of large crowds than for its athleticism. It was for the skimpy outfit and a slight obsession with being the center of attention.

Anyway, it was September 11, 2001, and I think my fear of flying developed that week—despite an adolescence filled with flights to Los Angeles every year for family functions, the Virgin Islands for vacation, or to the Northeast for scenic autumns. After a week of mayhem and confusion surrounding the events of that dreadful day, I was terrified to board a plane. But I did it because we were wearing my favorite uniform that weekend (a halter-style top with a tiny straight skirt), and I couldn’t wait to twerk on live television because the game was being televised.

On our way to the football game that Saturday morning, I actually saw the giant crater left in the side of the Pentagon by American Airlines Flight 77. A surreal experience as our bus continued toward the old Washington Redskins stadium past the huge Home Depot banner draped over its gaping hole. I’d have taken a photo of it, but back then, you had to pay to text, and you had to pay handsomely to send texts with pictures. I would’ve been charged a roaming fee somewhere in the ballpark of fifty trillion dollars for having the audacity to beam a picture to Florida all the way from Washington D.C.

My point here is, I began college a long time ago during a time when there was no such thing as iPhone, YouTube, or Facebook. So long ago that registration for classes happened in the gymnasium. Rows of banquet tables outfitted with computers, printers, and indifferent-looking university staff informing students of where to stand to register their class preferences—a weeklong affair that involved standing in line for approximately ninety hours for a very critical rubber stamp needed on very critical documents and forms for all incoming freshmen. A stamp requiring the signature of someone in another line you must stand in for an additional twelve hours. A signature you must obtain or otherwise be forcibly removed from the University’s premises and exiled to Uranus. There was a line in the gymnasium for every department. And filling out a FAFSA form meant completing a booklet of documents that very closely resembled IRS tax forms.

I’m surprised by how difficult it was for me to not open this essay with, “back in my day.” There is no faster way to get someone to check out of hearing you any further than starting with the same line as a bitter grandparent. I also really wanted to dazzle whomever might be reading this with romance, my genre of choice, but struggled with what I would need to edit in order to avoid getting Honeycomb Literary Journal blacklisted or banned from ever existing again. That wouldn’t be fair to its readers, or the talented writers celebrated in this fantastic, student-run publication. So I’m leaving with some thoughts I feel compelled to share about going back to school in my forties. Twenty years into marriage, ten years into mothering, and seven million years into the existence of humans. And as desperately as I didn’t want to open with a cliché, I am.

Back in my day, the nineties, many of the students I sat with in classes at SCAD didn’t exist. They were likely born while I sat in a poetry workshop (true story), making inappropriate jokes that my very elderly professor did NOT get. I even convinced her that the vacuum she’d written about in her collection of poetry was a “carpet muncher.” We sat snickering for an entire class period as she very proudly referred to the carpet muncher for the duration of class. For the record, I wouldn’t dream of using this language again due to a profound awareness of derogatory phrases that just wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) fly these days. But back in my day, it was the funniest hour-and-a-half poetry workshop of the semester.

I brought it up because I was young once. And I understood nothing in the world except that I was not dead yet, and should therefore do any and everything because someday, I would be.

I love martinis. Like, love them. The shape of the glass… It’s a party in a glass cone. In fact, while waiting for SCAD commencement to begin, one of my fellow writing department grads asked what I’d be doing to celebrate after the ceremony. I responded, “martinis” with glee.

Anyway, on Mondays, I meet my dad for lunch, and we drink and talk, and are merry until we can’t stand ourselves. Right after defending my thesis, he asked me how it felt knowing I was done with school—officially graduating with a master’s degree.

I shrugged and answered honestly. I said, “I don’t know.”

And I truly didn’t. I’d been struggling to process what I’d just participated in for almost two and a half years.

I need a new couch for my living room (and I realize the hard left this just took, but I swear I’m headed to a point with this). The one we have now was affordable, has mid-century modern flair, and LARPs very well as an expensive sofa from a high-end retailer. Thank you, Wayfair.

It has died now. It sinks when you sit on it. It dips and aches, and the cushions deflate. If it could talk, it’d say, “Oof. My back!”

It led me to Kudzu’s the other day. One of those trendy consignment shops that has everything from vintage typewriters to vintage lingerie. It’s a kitschy dream, just the place I needed to be: replacing my old, frail couch with an even older one! I had no business being there except that I’d gone online prior to arriving and saw a new-ish sofa on their website that came with custom upholstering options. Which was a dream because from Rooms-to-Go to Pottery Barn, retailers’ color palettes seem limited to white, beige, off-white, off-beige, and if you’re feeling really adventurous, off-off-whitebeige.

I didn’t leave with a new sofa that day, but I did walk out with jumbo taper candles I needed to find holders for, pronto! They were so cute and so obnoxiously jumbo that I didn’t want to go home before finding something to light and enjoy them in. So for the rest of the day, I made it my mission to visit trinket-y stores for the right containment.

My first stop was an Urban Outfitters located in a small retail strip shared with a movie theater, a shipping store, and a lot full of cars fighting over the one parking space it has. No, but seriously, parking is tricky there, and on this particular day, I was lucky to find a spot right in front of my destination.

Anyway, an older woman stood confused, staring at one of those QR code parking signs. She seemed bewildered–frustrated–longing for a time when paying to park meant digging into your cup holder for loose change to feed the meter.

I could totally relate.

On the back of my Subaru is a car magnet with the following: Please be patient with me. I’m from the 1900s.

We’re in the same boat, sister, I thought as she just looked up at the parking sign, befuddled with her mouth hanging open.

“Excuse me,” the woman caught me as I began up the ramp to enter the store, “What do I do after I take the picture of the sign?” She asked me this, showing me a lovely photograph on her phone of the QR code in the same way one would present pictures of their grandkids, or cute puppies.

I don’t know why, but it made me think of college. It made me think of returning to school, nearly at the halfway mark of life. The entry to SCAD 1600’s hub entry flashed into my mind. It’s portal—some kind of amusement park gate. Bright lights, immersive art, and lanyard key fobs. When I learned mySCAD was an app, I was the old woman standing in front of me, genuinely worried that with one wrong move, I’d accidentally detonate something horrible and irreversible.

I applied to SCAD because I’m at a point in my life where I want to share stories about my past because, to my horror, little details begin to fade like the ghosts of loved ones in the Disney film, Coco. Writing down what I know keeps these mental vignettes alive— either through creative non-fiction, or through the voices and experiences of fictional characters.

Remembering.

The older I get, the more I wish I’d written things down. Everything. From the time I scarfed down a friend’s powdered donuts she’d brought from home as she went to get her lunch from thecafeteria line, to the time I got kicked out of catechism³, to being able to expertly sneak into (and out of) the guys’ dorms with Mission Impossible level skill…I don’t want to forget those things, and I hate when little details fade. They’re the reason I write. They’re the little memory pings coercing my eyes open in the middle of the night because they don’t want to be forgotten, either.

These moments help me shape characters and tap into emotions I can contemplate as I stare out of a window with a cup of coffee for stretches of time—sometimes causing my husband to stop and make sure I haven’t stroked out or have somehow frozen perched up with my eyes open in the corner of our pitiful couch—sorting through feelings and why humans do what they do or say what they say.

Not to sound like the movie American Pie, but this one time at band camp—I believe it was 1995—this girl on the flag team confronted me during lunch. I was beginning my freshman year of high school, painfully aware that I was not cool by any means. So at lunchtime, when the band adjourned for one hour of unsupervised personal time, me and a girl named Monique (who was at band camp all summer but never came back once school started) always ate at the front of the school on the auditorium steps, absolving ourselves of the pressure to “fit in” so that we could just enjoy our home-packed lunches. The cool kids were too good for bag lunches. They would usually pile into someone’s car blasting Tupac or Aerosmith and screech off to the Wendy’s down the street. Occasionally, the cool kids didn’t have money to splurge on the luxury of Wendy’s, so they’d roam campus, smoke cigarettes across the street in the Walgreen’s parking lot, or claim a spot on the front steps of the auditorium while Monique and I nervously consumed our Lunchables, praying that we could somehow become invisible. One interesting group of cool kids consisted of hip-hop-loving guys from New York who bonded over the fact that they were from New York—which placed them in the omniscient category of experts on the best music, dance moves, and malls to hang out at.

Every now and then, if we were lucky enough to witness the New York group at their most culturally elevated, we could observe them in their rarest form: launching into beatboxing, bobbing their heads and staring at the ground until they found words to speak to a random beat as crowds of mere mortals gathered to observe their ancient ritual of spitting “conscious rap.” It was above our heads, and waaaaay cooler than Monique and me sitting on the steps stabbing at Capri-Suns with little plastic straws.

The ringleader of the New York group was a trumpet player everyone called Kool Whip. A tall, thin, Puerto Rican and Black guy whose hair was all the rage among the girls. It was wild—he was wild—rapping and New Yorking better than anyone in Orlando. And right before lunch was over, he’d always walk by Monique and me to speak the words every girl on campus and at that camp longed to hear him say. With a tilt of his goatee’d chin, he’d look our way and say, “Sup.”

It was the ‘sup’ that launched a thousand ships because for the rest of band camp, Kool Whip’s ex-girlfriend, who happened to be on the flag squad, confronted me about staying away from her man, and parked herself and her posse of flag-twirling upperclassmen at the auditorium steps to serve as a barrier between me and Mr. Whip.

Thirty years later, on a trip to Orlando with my husband and daughter, I thought it’d be fun to take a spin pointing out the sites and sounds of my adolescent years. When I drove to the site of the band camp ambush, it was gone. I hadn’t realized the old Edgewater High School had been reduced to nothing and then rebuilt in the place of a shopping center that used to sit directly adjacent to it. A shopping center that used to have a gnarly costume shop my mom frequented for work⁴.

It was all gone. Now, in its place, a brand new Edgewater High School, save the athletic field, and the library built during my senior year.

These days, I find myself in a race with time for anything to matter or resonate with someone else, which is why I find so much joy in writing about love and the intimate moments when connections are made.

A connection was made with the elderly woman in the parking lot of Urban Outfitters that day that brought me a little out of the weird funk I’d been in after graduating. It felt a little like being on the Hero’s Journey, where a wise old woman or wizard shows up to remind a weary traveler of purpose.

Her relief when I assisted her will stick with me. I recognized myself in that moment. Being at SCAD faced with this giant, futuristic version of college. I was her, standing there, hoping to survive without accidentally blowing something up.

After I helped her navigate to the pay-for-parking screen, she said something to me that I will never forget.

She said, “It’s not hard to be kind, is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” I concurred.

“And it’s free!” She said, giving me a wink.

As a writer, part of the joy in the craft is that someone somewhere cares what you have to say. And that, at best, understood something a little more about the human condition.

Going back to school in my forties.

For my first day at SCAD, I’d purchased packets of college ruled paper and the Maserati of notebooks. It had pockets, folders, dividers, the works. I’d raided the back-to-school section of Target only to get to class and find out that assignments would be posted and critiqued electronically. And while I appreciate the efficiency, I don’t think I will ever fully process notgoing to a student center or library to spend $1.25 printing out copies of my stories for class. A requirement in most of my workshops back in the early 2000s was to print a copy of our prose for the entire class. And let me tell you, trekking across campus with twenty copies of (and this is the real title of one of my undergrad short stories) “The Life of a Penny⁵”, hugging a stack of 5 papers ready to change my peers’ lives with the written word was an exhilaration for me that can only be compared to opening presents on Christmas morning, or sex. Handing out my work and going home with a stack of stories, writing feedback on the paper with highlighters and symbols… it was glorious. The tactile component to writing. Putting your hands on someone else’s paper, interacting with their work, then bringing it back to class like a gift exchange to workshop and discuss…It was ceremonial, and it was fun for us all. Fashion designers get to construct the garments; writers get to form the words that actors say, the stories that teach our children lessons, the speeches that move crowds to fight for justice, and peace…the list goes on.

So it was weird doing everything digitally. I couldn’t see markings and highlights, or the handwriting of fellow classmates. The trail of symbols or colored ink guiding me to a new idea, suggestion, or wording. Instead, I logged into a machine, clicked to download, cursed a few times when I accidentally downloaded the same document, opened the document, clicked and chose a text box to make a comment… clicked another menu to highlight… saved and uploaded my comments to the Blackboard platform, then commented there via more menus and fonts—all while longing to just reach over into a pile, pull out a story without having to become an expert in computer coding to just tell someone they forgot a comma on page five.

I think I went back to school to prove something to myself. I’ve made mistakes throughout my life, and like many people, sought to make them purposeful by learning and growing, and continuing to do something every day to make myself better. I never got used to being at SCAD because, like all new things, it takes bravery to face new challenges. I still have this feeling of “now what?” Which is fine, I have plenty of work and life to tend to. In fact, I’m going to end this now to grab my graduation flogger as inspiration to sort through some more of my erotic romance novel. I have a world to save with love.

1. While festive, let me tell you, these contraptions gave a very BDSM vibe. As an author of erotic romance, my natural reflex was to give the back of the chair in front of me a few taps to see if it would make a sound if used on flesh. But our commencement speaker, the fantastic and talented John Batiste, was talking about being a light in the darkness and going forth into the world with our light, so I’m pretty sure our devices weren’t free sex toys from SCAD, but rather
   metaphorical tchotchkes for not giving up on our dreams. But still, they looked like light-up floggers. ↩︎
2. She finished with a 3.7! ↩︎
3. Yes. This happened. I literally got excommunicated from my first communion for cursing at 3 this kid named Thomas who made fun of my figure skating attire. I was a competitive figure skater, and during the eighth grade I was obsessed with grunge. So I went to practice that entire year looking like Kurt Cobain on figure skates— usually wearing a striped, oversized t-shirt, biker shorts and ripped flesh-color tights to rebel against perfection and unrealistic standards of beauty—much to my coach’s horror. One particular night, I had this exact outfit on at catechism class because I’d gone there right after skate practice. So I can’t say Thomas wasn’t justified in telling me I looked like Kermit the Frog on meth, but I was not amused and vocalized it in the form of calling him an asshole in front of the youth of Christ the King Lutheran Church (Orlando), Pastor Schultz, and quite possibly the Lord himself. ↩︎
4. My mother wasn’t a cosplayer, she did wardrobe and costuming for television and film and visited this costume shop almost weekly. It was the only functioning business in the now torn down shopping plaza. ↩︎
5. A story I wrote because of how proud I was of a bumper sticker I’d gotten for my car. It said “Democrats are sexy. Who ever heard of a nice piece of elephant?” I’d also just finished reading Susan Jane Gilman’s, Kiss My Tiara: How to Rule the World as a Smartmouth Goddess. I was very high on sass dope and got the brilliant idea to write a story about a Democrat banging a Republican in a coat closet at a fundraiser. And they’re banging so hard that the tip jar falls over and the girl chokes on a penny. It’s as awful as it sounds, and I loved it. Ironically, my thesis ended up being the first eighty pages of my first romance novel. It’s about a Democrat falling in love with a Republican, and I’m beginning to think I have some subconscious desire to broker world peace in the sack. ↩︎

---

About the Author