Graduation Daze

Dear Media Arts,
Sometime between my first day and my graduation ceremony, I thought you were never going to end. I wasn't happy about this. I thought you were going to drag on, while I waited to get all my grades and pay my dues. You were this limbo of late nights that became early, scrambles for equipment, and memorizing acronyms for business class. Endless. Day in and day out. Good god, I thought, we’re not getting out alive.

Now, on the day my classmates and I officially become alumni and walk onto the huge production that is life after college, I realize my true feelings. I love you. Even if you can be the biggest bitch I’ve met in my whole life, I love you. A lot.

I love you because of the collection of people you’ve brought to me. This family I’ve become a member of without trying, an eclectic mosaic of visionaries, music makers, comedians, freaks, geeks, lovers, and haters. A clan of wild children, day and night looking for ways to tell their stories. These people who tap into every sense they have to experience the world around them. These people who love what they do so much they put endless tears, sweat and time into it. Thank you for each and every one of them. Not just the ones who I call my close friends, but the ones I call by first and last name, the ones I know by reputation or by iconic hats. Thank you for not just fellow students, but teachers who became mentors who became friends. Subjects who became ideas, who became people, who became the best bear hugs I’ve ever had. Thank you for you my first real love.

I love you for pushing me to the edge of my sanity. For challenging me to go above and beyond what I thought was possible and reasonable. I learned to look at something that might be pretty good, and then to carry it even further. Pretty good was just not good enough for you. I love you for looking at the script that was my life, taking out your red pen and giving me a major rewrite. You gave me challenges to over come, and it was either fight back and succeed or bail and resign myself to the fact that I quit. Whether it was directing a short film or falling out of a tree in Texas, I never stopped trying. I'd get up and go again. I saw our relationship through all the way to the end. I grew.

I love you for being you. While my friends were stressing about 20 page essays, I was writing stories about Jack the Ripper. They were listening to music, but I was mixing it. They had class, I was out on film shoots in the big wide world. They suffered through midterms, and I suffered through Wavelength. Thank you for being the mixed bag that allowed me and my fellow students to find their niche.

In fact, Media Arts, the only thing I don’t love about you is the fact that you’re officially over. Now you belong to someone else. You were difficult, but anything worth having is not easily attained. You may have been hard, but you were mine. Now you’re off to seduce younger minds, newest victims, who will also take you for granted. What I don’t love is that you took up my whole life, and now you’ve left me with big dreams, and the skills to achieve them, but not a hand to hold. Not a stable schedule. Come September, I won’t be seeing you again. I’ll miss you, but I'll never forget you.

-Riley

[I wrote this last Thursday, but I'm only posting it now.]