I Skipped My Own Graduation. Now I Go to Everyone Else's.

This weekend I went to my niece’s college graduation. The room was packed. Parents, grandparents, cousins, family friends. Every kid had their own little cheering section. It was a big occasion. And honestly, until I sat there watching it, I never quite realized just how big.

I never went to my own graduation. I picked up my degree from the university a couple of weeks later, alone. There was no ceremony, no one asked how it felt, and I didn’t expect anyone to. We lived on the outskirts of Mumbai, and the thing I loathed most was traveling across the city. The idea of trekking back home late at night just to walk across a stage felt like more trouble than it was worth. So I skipped it. At the time, that seemed like a perfectly normal decision.

It wasn’t until I moved to the US, and especially after my kids were born, that I started to see what these ceremonies actually do. My first graduation, of any kind, was my daughter’s pre-K. I remember walking in and being genuinely surprised at the enthusiasm. For four-year-olds finishing pre-K. Since then I’ve gone to many. Elementary for my daughter, high school for my niece and nephew, college for my brother-in-law, and now this one.

And the cheering doesn’t stop at graduations. It carries into soccer games, music recitals, science fairs. Growing up, I wasn’t used to any of that. The first few times I heard parents yelling from the sidelines of a kids’ soccer match, I thought it was too much. Too much pressure on the kid for what was supposed to be a light-hearted thing. I still don’t yell, personally. But I’ve come around to seeing the other side of it. There’s something real about being told, loudly and publicly, that someone is in your corner.

Sitting at my niece’s ceremony, watching all these new graduates beam at the crowd, my mind wandered somewhere else. With this AI wave coming, what does a degree like this even mean five years from now? These kids looked so relaxed. So happy. So unaware of what’s actually waiting for them out there.

Because the corporate jungle doesn’t grade you on your degree. It grades you on what you bring to the table. Your productivity. Your resourcefulness. Whether you can operate with minimal guidance. Whether you can handle the politics. Whether you can manage your own emotional triggers when things get hard. Whether you can read a room. How clearly you articulate your thoughts. What you say, to whom, and more importantly, what you don’t say.

It’s a lot. And none of it is in the curriculum.

But it’s also a lot like learning to drive. When someone first explains it to you, clutch, gas, mirrors, lane discipline, anticipating the idiot in the next lane, it sounds impossible. There’s no way you’ll ever do all of that at once. And then a year in, you’re driving home from work with the radio on, half-thinking about dinner, and the car just goes where you want it to. Your subconscious is doing the driving. You don’t even notice the thing you once thought was impossible.

I think the same is true for everything that’s ahead of these kids. The first job will feel overwhelming. So will the second. And then one day they’ll be the ones a new graduate looks at and thinks, “how do they make it look so easy?”

Anyway. It was a great day. A joyful one. We got to celebrate. And there are many more of these to come.

Some food for thought

A few questions I found myself turning over on the drive home. Maybe sit with them too.

  1. Which of your own milestones did you quietly skip because showing up felt like “more trouble than it was worth”? Whose cheering section were you really opting out of, theirs or your own?
  2. If you grew up without a sideline of people yelling for you, what does it cost you, even now, to believe someone is actually in your corner?
  3. The thing in your work life that feels impossible today, which version of it will you be doing on autopilot a year from now without noticing?
  4. If a degree won’t be the thing that distinguishes these kids in five years, what is the equivalent question for you right now? What are you being graded on at work that nobody put in your job description?
  5. When was the last time you cheered, loudly and publicly, for someone who didn’t strictly need it? And when was the last time someone did that for you, and you let yourself actually take it in?

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