Hey, I’m really sorry I haven’t been around for a bit. There was a wedding I was actively involved in (planning, not marrying), then I had to sort out my Graduation.

Yeah, that’s right, I graduated! A day after Barry Hussein got inaugurated. Both of us got congratulated. Any more of this rhyming and I’ma get discombobulated… anyway,the plan was to put something up related to the whole graduation process, but my editor offered me a chance to hate on the institution on a larger scale, so I acquiesced.

Truths about graduation;

No matter when you get through it, you will not be the last of your friends to don the gown and shit. There’s always someone from your year.

You are never the oldest guy in the room. There will always be some other cat with a greyer beard or, if you will, wrinkles around the…mouth.

You may think you are the happiest person during the ceremony. You are not. Your folks will always be happier. Your friends will be happier.

Your folks will be glad that you are closer to leaving the house. Your friends will figure you’re going to throw a party and offer free drinks.

The day will be a bitch in one way or another. Either it will be too hot, or too cold.

There will be traffic.

When you go to the studio, and you probably will. The guy or girl taking pictures will be happier than you are.

Someone, despite of the obvious nature of your clothing will feel the need to ask, “so…you graduated?”

You will not tell that person, “no, sunshine, my laundry doesn’t get back till next week so I just threw some stuff together”

and in case you missed it on Sunday, here’s that grad piece from the Sunday paper.

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Education is a cruel beast. A monster even. People say campus is the final frontier. After you are done with that, your life finally begins. Everyone claims that the campus experience is the best you will ever have. Everyone lies.

The campus process is the offspring of the education system that we already established is a cruel beast. The process of getting round to graduating is, it has been suggested, a nightmare.

And with good reason too.

You see, you don’t just graduate. That would be way too easy, and if there’s anything the university isn’t, that would be it! Okay, that last statement didn’t make sense to me either. Then again, when you are dealing with matters involving campus, nothing does. For instance, why on earth would you have to go and ‘clear’ with the library, knowing full well you’ve never been there?

Is this for someone else’s benefit? I think somewhere in the bowels of the library lives a troll that so badly needs to see everyone’s registration number and will not rest until everybody has been cleared. It’s all well and good, really. I get it. After screwing you over for so long, the university would not appreciate you screwing it over by stealing its books.

Granted there are other departments that give you the run around, but these actually have the capacity to mess up my life so I will not be taking cheap shots at the university police or the University Hospital. Those are in the box labeled handle with care IF you must!

So, having ‘cleared’ with the various departments, all you have to do now is saunter into a room over at Senate building and drop off your files. However, as is the practice with everything at the university, you need to make copies of your documents. No institution in the world has as many Xerox machines as campus (it would be a shame if after all these years there I failed to call an educating spoon a spoon; Makerere) and it irks me no end that the prices for ‘making copies’ are never hiked. The economy is doing badly, boda boda charges are going through the roof, Mama Solome is charging more for her food, but the guy at the copy machine still charges shs.50. Where is your
business acumen?

Fine, so you hand in your stuff. Then a couple of weeks later, they announce that the list of guys and gals graduating is out. You go to the university and warily look it over. Is campus that tired of you? Yes it is. You can now buy a gown. And the mortar board and the hood.

D-day is here. You are going to sit in a tent. It will be hot as heck inside there and you will be surrounded by people you will likely never see again. And that’s why you will smile. You will smile because you know, deep down that you will not have to do this ever again. Some other hapless soul will suffer as you have. Through the education system.

Through lecturers of the unfunny persuasion. Through the fumes emitted by ‘photocopy machines’. Smile. You just excelled in graduation tasks!