Congratulations!
You are finished with Howard University! You no longer have to wait in line at financial aid for five hours, only to be told that your paperwork was never received. You do not have to hunt down professors to get an override slip signed for a class you later find out you don’t need. You no longer have to live off of Chicken and Broccoli Alfredo from the PunchOut. With that said, you no longer have to wait an hour for it to be burnt either.
If you’re just leaving the dorms, you can finally live somewhere where there will be hot water on a consistent basis. You don’t have to create diversions at the front desk to sneak your friends in to your room. “Visitation” now becomes a thing of the past.
It’s really over.
Time to enjoy the luxuries of real life. Rent. 9-5. Bills. Loans. All the fun stuff that makes up the “grown-up” life.
Yep! Now you get to deal with bosses who don’t care about what you learned in college and simply want you to make copies and get coffee, as if you’re some kind of intern. You get to deal with landlords who could care less about that last refund check Howard owes you. You get to meet with bankers who don’t care that you spent loan money shopping for new Sperry’s, your dress, hair, and nails for the Howard / Hampton Cabaret, and ordering way too much Dandy’s and Wings Over Washington. You graduated; it’s time to pay up.
Lucky for you, you’re a Howard Grad and if ANYONE knows how to make things work, a Howard Alum does.
Howard students define the word hustle, and thanks to all that Howard puts us through on a daily basis, we know how to get it done, whatever it is.
You called Howard every day your senior year of high school, trying to find out how much money you were going to get in loan money, and submitted the same paperwork a million times.
Or how about that internship you wanted but you missed the deadline to apply? Somehow you got the internship, and you were the best intern they had ever seen, so good in fact, that they let you stop answering phones and do real work.
What about that semester that you know you should have been purged? You know you weren’t validated, but by the grace of God, and a little schmoozing, you were able to stay.
Though it seemed like you’d be the next one outside Meridian packing everything you owned into a U-Haul mid-September, you made it.
See, Howard may be hard on us and may make us jump through hoops, but it makes us stronger and more prepared for the real world than many other grads.
So when you talk your boss into giving you that raise you’ve been asking for, remember that Howard gave you the skills you needed to survive out there and that without Howard, you might still be waiting for handouts that don’t come in the real world.
Remember, also, to give back to the school that made you who you are today. Sure, enjoying the Homecoming festivites is great, but how about you stimulate the Howard University economy rather than the Georgia Avenue economy?
Congratulations, Class of 2009! We hope these were the best four — or five –– years of your life!
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