I did it! I finally graduated! Hooray!! The whole experience was a lot cooler than I had anticipated. Obviously, graduating from college is a huge milestone and I was definitely proud of myself for making it to that point, but I guess it just hadn’t set in that I really was done, and what I had accomplished. Before graduation I hadn’t really thought too much about the ceremony. In all honesty, I probably wouldn’t have even attended if it weren’t for my parents coming out to see me graduate (a little anti-climatic if all we were to do was say, yay, I’m done 😛 ) I opted to go to the BIG graduation ceremony rather than the smaller one for just my college. If it had been more recent that I had been in school and I had a strong bond to my classmates I probably would have done it the other way around. However, it was a really cool experience. I really liked being there as President Samuelson congratulated all of us and read us some statistics about our graduating class. I liked seeing all the different majors and just the vast number of people graduating! There was a lot of ceremony to it that doesn’t necessarily mean much, but I have to admit that I left feeling a lot different than I did when I went in.

Elder Bednar came and spoke. I wish I could find a transcript of the things he said but I haven’t been able to find anything just yet. If I can, I will definitely post it here. It was really neat as he talked about the things we had accomplished and putting it into a larger perspective, of how we could use what we’d learned to better the church and the world. It was a really cool time just to look back on all of my BYU experience and remember the neat experiences and lessons that I had learned.

I’ve said many times that I don’t believe that BYU is for everyone, and I still believe that, however, it’s a WONDERFUL place and I feel incredibly blessed for the experience I was able to have here. I really do hope that I’ll be able to take all that I’ve learned and apply it throughout the rest of my life to best serve others and continue to learn and grow.