Last Saturday, I dressed up in a fancy gown, hood, hat, and along with approximately 240 of my other classmates, walked across a stage at the Civic Center in the FSU College of Law graduation ceremony. It will still be a few weeks before final grades from this last semester are posted and our degrees are officially conferred. In the words of my mother, though, “It was a great day.” Some of my family and friends were there, and we celebrated afterwards by going out to eat and then to a FSU baseball game.
Of all that went on Saturday at the ceremony, the program bulletin was the most interesting thing to me. It listed all of the graduates, along with various accomplishments we achieved during our three years. The program also provided which students are going to graduate with honors, pending the outcome of this last semester. Those who are in a position to graduate cum laude had an asterisk by their name. Those set to graduate magna cum laude had two asterisks, and those who could finish summa cum laude had three asterisks next to their name.
Out of the entire graduating class, only four students had ***. I know each of the four fairly well. In fact, my last social outing as a law school student was in the company of two of them…
During this past “exam season,” I only took one evening off to have some fun. The occasion was a going away party for one of my friends. He is moving to Miami to take a job with a law firm, and he was also one of the four students with *** by his name in the graduation program.
The party was at his house, and it was one of the most enjoyable that I have experienced in law school. He and his wife own a couple of cats, and I always like it when there are animals around to keep me company. An additional *** student came by, along with a number of other all-star students whom I now know are set to graduate with honors or high honors.
The talent of these students has always amazed me. In addition to being the best scholars in our class, they are excellent gardeners, wood craftsmen, marathon runners, and musicians. They are just good at life, generally. Whereas for myself, I struggle at keeping a clean apartment.
One friend of mine was in fact a professional musician prior to coming to law school. At the party, he and our Miami-bound host entertained us by taking turns singing requests for pop songs from the 80s and 90s. With only one acoustic guitar, they kept us entertained for hours.
Their display of talent showed me another change in technology that was not around when I went to parties as an undergraduate. Using their hand held I-phone, Droid, Blackberry or whatever you call it, they were able to take a request, search for the chord pattern of the song on the Internet, and then play it while looking at the small screen on their device.
My favorite songs were those that the former pro knew by heart. With only the acoustical guitar, he performed amazing ballad-style covers of hits from Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and SirMixaLot.
Not only were the songs very well done, the lyrics were shockingly hilarious.
The other ***student at the party enjoyed the music more than anyone. But at one point, she watched me as I listened and said, “This is going to be a blog entry.” Her comment surprised me, as I did not know that she read my blog.
As the hour became late, she also said what I was beginning to think for myself: “I really need to be studying right now.”
But that night, it was just too much fun. We both stayed much longer- until the two musicians’ voices became tired.
I do not think the indulgence hurt my exam performance, and I am glad I took the time to party with some *** and ** students. It was great to see their talents and personalities in a somewhat different light.
Until Next Time,
Nathan Marshburn
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