Hooting and Hollering

I'm in the middle of my final paper for my graduate school career. Other than one class period today in which I have very little responsibility, it is the last thing that I have to accomplish before I graduate. Yeah, I'd like to get my apartment a bit cleaner, and yeah, I plan to celebrate with banquets and parties, but it is the absolute last weight of academia left. One little page, single spaced (two pages double), with plenty to say. It is now just a matter of saying it so it makes sense.

I was standing on the corner this morning in the rain talking to a friend. We were having an all too serious conversation for 7:15 in the morning the Thursday before we graduate. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a second-year student (Middlers we like to call them) come out of his apartment and plod his way down the street until he saw us on the corner. At this point he ran towards us yelling "SENIORS RULE!" I felt like I was in high school, and I loved it!

Here at seminary we have things like special sending worship services and receptions to honor graduates - we stay pretty quiet about it, with little hooting and hollering (although we have a large group of us going to a dueling piano bar Friday night called "Howl at the Moon", maybe some hollering will happen there). So, to have someone who is not a senior excited for us - hooting and hollering - made my day.

Maybe we don't hoot and holler because we are reserved Lutherans. Maybe we don't because we worry that those who are not graduating will feel dejected (I could have used a softer word, but that's no fun!). Maybe some people think it is just not dignified and refined to hoot and holler(why do we have to be dignified and refined all the time anyway?). Maybe we don't because it takes energy to hoot and holler and we are scrambling to conserve our energy for the time when family arrives and when we will sit through a 3 hour worship service during which we graduate. Maybe I just have a powerful urge to hoot and holler because I am reaching for ways in which to procrastinate these last few paragraphs of academia.

So, in an effort to remain dignified, not subject anyone to dejection and conserve my energy I am refraining from hooting and hollering for the moment....at least until this paper is completed.