I'm a university graduate now

When I was sixteen I remember turning up to one of my English Lit classes, throwing myself into my chair and demanding to know "what's the point of university anyway?".

I almost didn't go to university, but I'm glad I did. Not because of the anxiety it caused, the way I started judging my self-worth based on my grades or the dull endless books I had to slog through. I'm glad I did because I met some amazing people who shared those tortuous three years; they made my sentence bearable. It felt so good to share my graduation day with these same people - it was like a celebration of all we'd been through together. Plus dorky hats.

I arrived early to collect my tickets and was ushered into a room full of hats and gowns where I was to wait for somebody to 'dress' me. That's right, there were hired professionals who knew exactly how to place the robe over my body so it draped just right and would not let me leave until they were satisfied with the way I looked. This is me immediately after being 'dressed':

Between you and me, I had a LOT of hair under there - even with the sides shaved. It took four different sizes of hat, three hair pins and two people to get that cap over my head. I wish I was kidding. There was only other black person in the room at the time, who was probably a Computing student since I had never seen him before ever swapped sympathetic looks with me. Although, I didn't really mind. It wasn't my fault the hats were designed with such little stretch and I was just happy to have passed all my modules to graduate.

Anyway, with the hat expertly placed on my head I left the room, spent maybe five minutes saying hi to people in the corridors and went to take my place in the Great Hall. This is how I ended up:

The hood was pretty much twisted for the rest of that day. It was SO heavy and SO warm that it was impossible to keep perfect since I had to, you know, walk around, drink free champagne and be human. But whatever, it was fun running around pretending to be Professor Snape in that robe. I'd definitely do it again.

Maybe.