What Graduation Means 4 Years Later

I graduated from the University of California, Irvine (zot zot) in 2010.  Four years later, so much has happened since my graduation, I feel like it was a lifetime ago.  Yet I can still remember it like yesterday.

I remember the anxiety of taking my first steps into the real world of careers and 9-5 work schedules.  I remember debating whether or not I had to go to grad school, whether or not that would affect my future.  I recall considering getting a teaching credential and teaching high school English.

Now, four years later, all my worries seem silly.  I'm married, working, co-own a home.  Things that seemed perpetually "down the road" at the time of graduation.  I notice some of the graduates dwelling in anxiety.  Part of me wants to tell them to not waste their time; the other part of me knows they need to learn a few things of experience like I did.  A few things like:

A Truly Scrumptious Imagination

Raised on the 1990s, I spent hours in front of the television watching Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, the King and I, and also the beloved but slightly less well-known classic, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Thanks to Amazon Prime, I was able to watch it recently for the first time as an adult.  I didn't remember any of the plot, but the songs were as familiar as an old friend.  Somehow, you never seem to forget those tunes from your childhood.  (Sherman Brothers magic.)

The film was released in 1968 and based off of a book by the same author of James Bond.  He wrote it for his son.  The movie's screenplay was co-written by Roald Dahl.

These details stood out to me because, as I watched the movie, I didn't realize that 75% of the movie is spent watching events entirely imagined.