<p>I went to see a free movie with friend of mine who got it from her cell phone deal or something, it was “It’s complicated” staring Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin, good actors save cheesy story and it was all good fun, but there this part their kid is graduating from fancy college in NYC, I cried, because
I guess I will never able to do that since
My kid will not go to any fancy college
Might not able to graduate at all
I will never be able to afford fly in with family in tow across the continent and have four star hotel, restaurant reservation etc etc
It must be like the wedding day, one day in our life everything is worth all that trouble and money spent before and after and forever.
I never had any fantasy regarding my wedding nor funeral for that matter. Why is that kid’s fancy commencement day image stuck in my head this badly?</p>
<p>Because, until now, it never once occurred to you that it was possible to have a fantasy college graduation. You already knew about fantasy weddings and funerals. This one is news to you, so it is much more intriguing.</p>
<p>It poured down rain the day I graduated from college, and it was standing room only under the tent on the college lawn because no one wanted to sit out in the rain even if they had brought umbrellas. The sun didn’t come out until the ceremony was all over, and then only long enough for us to escape back to our dorms and pick up the last of our stuff. Definitely, no one’s idea of a fantasy.</p>
<p>The best graduation I’ve ever been to, was at Ashford U in Clinton, Iowa. I flew out for the weekend to see my baby sister graduate from college almost 25 years after she’d originally enrolled. My other sisters and I sat in the bleachers of the gym, the graduating sister’s husband and four of her five kids (the other was at Marine boot camp) sat in chairs on the gym floor, and when baby sister crossed the stage to graduate with honors (unlike us older three), all of us stood up and cheered. Ashford has a huge distance ed. program, there were graduates from all over the world. Every single one of them had at least one friend or family member in the audience. Everyone had someone to stand up and cheer. It got to the point where everyone was cheering for everyone else. Near pandemonium. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was absolutely the best.</p>
<p>Movies are about fantasy. Your kid’s graduation is about reality. When the time comes, I wish you sunny skies, or at least an un-leaky tent, and lots of people to cheer when your kid crosses the stage.</p>
<p>I guess I have found myself saying this alot these days…If your child wants a college education than he or she will have one. If you are concerned about money than their are ways in this great United States to get an education. If what you are upset about is that your child is not able to go to college because of some other reasons than you need to accept that. I suspect that you think college is only for the rich…it is NOT. Instead of making your children feel like college is not attainable because of finances, make them believe that anything is attainable with the hard work, and determination to turn life around. </p>
<p>The very top schools in this country offer very nice aid to excellent students so don’t give up on a dream. That is not to say that the graduation you attend with your child wont be as magical if he/she does not attend a top school. Just revel in the moment when the time comes.</p>
<p>If your kid graduates, celebrate that! If not, celebrate his/her other accomplishments.</p>
<p>We just attended my nephew’s graduation, from a large public (no CC presence). I drove 12 hours total to see him - who knows whether he’ll be the only one to graduate in his generation? I nearly lost it when a little girl sitting in the bleachers nearby said ‘Congratulations, Daddy!’ as her dad crossed the stage. After the ceremony, we had $5 lunch specials at a little Mexican joint with sombreros and an Elvis rug hanging on the wall. I did have that ‘what’s it like to graduate from somewhere fancy’ moment (I had a chair facing Elvis…) but in the end, we are all Very Proud of nephew!</p>
<p>OP, I graduated from a large school and chose not to attend my graduation. By the time I graduated I was living off campus and felt very disconnected from the other students. Fast forward to my oldest son. Turns out he is graduating this August almost a full year early. He has a choice to walk in the graduation ceremony in May. He has told me he doesn’t plan on it. Thinks it is too much money and a waste of time. He isn’t graduating with a big group of friends due to the early graduation. I’m trying to focus on how much money I’m saving.
So much for the fantasy graduation in my head. I wanted my kid to have what I didn’t. Not sure why it stuck in your head but for sure each of us has to live the life we have not the one in the movies. Too bad because I would love a five star hotel and a certain male costar.</p>
<p>I haven’t see the movie- from what I have hear it is over the top in terms of expectations- for instance they were remodeling the kitchen? Everyone who saw it said the kitchen was perfect in the first place!</p>
<p>My oldest daughter graduated from a fancy college ( well in terms of expense- not in terms of required attire), in Portland , Or.
Her dad and sister, left the minute she walked across the stage cause they were due up the coast in the next state at a field trip for younger sister’s marine biology class.</p>
<p>The college had tents set up to host a dinner, but my brother and mother were driving me bats & I had lost my appetite, plus the stress of being around so many people who were college profs @ schools on east coast when I had not graduated from high school.</p>
<p>I don’t even remember what we did after, we had to hustle to get D out of her college owned townhouse by the deadline.( me and her roommates parents)</p>
<p>( it was however a gorgeous day- and a beautiful campus- it even played Emory University @ graduation in the movies- with " Into the Wild")</p>
<p>My sister got her BS from a commuter college at the age of 47. We all sat crowded onto bleachers in the university gym. We went out to eat afterwards at a cheap, family-style restaurant. Seeing their oldest daughter finally get a college degree at 47 was such a sweet experience for my parents, even though there was zero glamour.</p>
<p>Don’t worry - That movie was pure unadulterated fantasy!! Meryl lived in a gourgeous home on a 20 acre ranch out in Santa Barbara. She rarely went to work and that job was supposed to pay for all of that. I know movies are supposed to provide entertainment but I always get caught up in the BS of it all!</p>
<p>The movie is a comedy with fantasy elements. Relax. If the Meryl character were living in the real world she would be working 12-hour days at her business and she wouldn’t be able to stay in the big, gorgeous house, much less remodel it, unless her ex-H was mega-rich and she got a huge divorce settlement. (Come to think of it, I do know a family with this situation.) I loved the movie, very entertaining.</p>
<p>“Fancy” colleges are not important. It’s the education (and the degree) that’s important. The graduation ceremony is the least of it. I skipped my undergrad ceremony and my grad school ceremony was so huge, it was just impersonal and stupid. I could have skipped that too. My D also did not attend her graduation ceremony as she graduated one semester behind all her friends. </p>
<p>I also think the huge, expensive weddings are a big expense no one needs. This part of our society is a recent development, like huge houses, and really, it isn’t an improvement on our values.</p>
<p>My BIGGEST regret in life is not congratulating my Mom on receiving her GED in her late 40s. It happened the year I graduated from college. I was too caught up in MY achievement. When in fact her achievement was far greater than mine.</p>
<p>I think that movie opened up a lot of feelings for parents who are at the age when kids have left or will soon be leaving the nest. Or middle-aged people who are starting “the back nine”. Reinventing themselves. All of that stuff. Add to that a story about a relatively privileged family where private school tuition, five star hotels, expensive restaurants and cars, a pricey remodel of an upscale home, a posh and charming eatery which the main character owns, etc. All of it presented as matter-of-fact. </p>
<p>Nancy Meyers does it again. Loved It’s Complicated, and As Good As It Gets with Diane Keaton. Meyers has us laughing out loud, and also touches our hearts by speaking to so much that we are genuinely experiencing in a certain stage of life. At the same time however, in both of these films our authentic emotions are being expressed by people who are living ridiculous lives by most people’s standards. It is an interesting combination of things. Sort of makes you wonder…Should I be really skinny at 60+, look fantastic in tight white jeans, live in a gorgeous oceanfront home in the Hamptons, be loved as a friend by my adult daughter, get praised by the world for my career achievements in a highly creative field, and be pursued by a thirty-something doctor who is as handsome as Keanu Reeves?</p>
<p>My S graduated from big state u. last May the day after he was commissioned into the U.S. Navy. I had all these great ideas in my head about how we’d celebrate after one or both events. Didn’t happen. About a dozen of his close friends showed up for the comissioning and whisked him away afterwards to a favorite university hangout.</p>
<p>The next day after the graduation (in a borrowed cap and gown), yet another commissioning ceremony and lots of picture taking, we offered to take him to a nice restaurant in town to celebrate the culmination of his college life. He was tired and not interested in waiting in line at crowded restaurants with hundreds of other new grad/families…so we took him and his roommate to eat at a cheap Mexican place place across from the university, hugged him goodbye and then he was off to celebrate with all his friends…one last time.</p>
<p>So the moral of the story is, even if you do have some picture perfect vision in your mind, your kid may have a totally differrent idea about how he wants to celebrate.</p>
<p>bearsanddogs, I do understand the tears. There are times in adult life when you realize, I’ll never [own a pool, send a kid to Harvard, learn to figure skate, have a bigger home]. I think it’s totally fine to mourn the loss, then move on.</p>
<p>Thank you all with big wide world-y great insights.
I am an immigrant, worked all my US life getting my kid assimilated to so called mainstream, succeeded in someway, failed in many.
Last summer, we traveled to Philly and on the way, I dragged my kid then junior to Swarthmore’s commencement with some sneaky plan cooking, since Quakers welcomes everyone on their happy occasion.
Kids are lining up with hand picked from school’s rose garden bloom a each on their gown while friendly caretakers cheering on and on.
One ancient bent Asian grandma came to meet her granddaughter, who said
" Grandma, please go sit down"
" Nah I just had to see you here first"
The sky was cloudless, trees were beautiful, the ceremony was heartfelt.
My kid thought it was bit overkill because every time minority kid were called, everyone erupted in whoops and biggest cheer went to the kid with a white cane.
I felt unworthy and not belonging as to even nibble at cookies they had set up in the tent.
At the train station, we saw the honorable degree recipient, NYC Harlem museum director surrounded by friends and well wishers, someone offered ride and she was gone.
It happens just like that in real life at some fancy school that meets 100 percent needs in perfect early summer day.
If only one can get in and stay in and be out on time.</p>
<p>Into the wild did not bother me, because I knew what the movie was about beforehand, though I felt for the boy warning his parents in the past to not pick each other.
Even in “It’s complicated” Meryl mom was ditched by kids (gone with her credit card!) and that’s why all the mayhem started.
Well, most movies are basically about life is life is life is life.
I can live it, I do, I will.</p>
<p>Unless it rains. Or the graduate is ill. Or someone in the close family is at war or ill. And so on.</p>
<p>My sister did the “movie” graduation and it was wonderful. Equally wonderful was the pizza party my in-laws had when my then-boyfriend decided not to walk at graduation and requested a fun family night instead. </p>
<p>When my BIL graduated from a large, state college, it was incredibly moving to see so many families from so many different walks of life. I’ll never forget the two young men sitting behind me. They were pretty rowdy and I assumed they were there to see a friend graduate. We were asked to hold our applause as it was such a large class but when a middle aged woman walked across the state, they both stood up and yelled, “Way to go, Mom!” The three of them looked so happy. It may not have looked like a movie but the emotions were real and that’s what counts.</p>
<p>My folks have all attended our HS grads but NONE of our OOS college or professional school graduations (except for one, when parents were supposed to go on stage with the graduate). They did attend ONE grandchild’s graduation from law school (because it was in-state flagship U). We were glad they were there for us for the HS graduations and OK that they chose not to attend our other celebrations. My brother attended my college & graduate school graduations, as well as a few friends. My sibs often left town before their graduations from college & grad school; it really wasn’t a big deal for most of them.</p>
<p>Ok, this week’s free movie was
“A single man”
In the closet gay Brit Eng lit prof at Stanford circa 62’ sh.
I wonder how hard was it to get in back then ( and how much to attend??)
mod, nice, coffee vending machine 15 cents, he gave hot Spaniard boy 20 bucks as a parting gift without nothing sexy happened, like 100 bucks today? It looked like the same 20 bucks design, haven’t changed ever since until the recent ones?
Kids are talking about Cuba missile crisis. The girl chain smokes during seminar ashtray on her lap.
The prof go over Metamorphosis for his job while his lover dig Capote which prof gives chuckle. (newly published? say, today’s donno, Ian McEwan? Candace Bushnell?)
The house keeper is some (and only) minority, box of crackers in supposedly fancy prof’s household was Nabisco’s Saltine, the candy bar was no frill Hershey’s.
History in this dreamland which I missed: I wasn’t born - at that time, my parents had no indoor plumbing nor TV, car, ground phone line.
Movies become suddenly fun because it is free and I have so much to notice and digest now.
What Julianne Moore would tell her preteen kids what mommy does in there is not what real mommy doing when parents of their fancy private schoolmates are sure to see the movie playing few blocks from the actress’ adobe and will see her black lacy bra to freckled bare back is not my concern but add some local flavor.</p>