For Floridians, May is when the traffic thins and you can show up at a restaurant without a reservation. Extraordinarily massive clouds decorate the late afternoon skies. And at our universities, students graduate: at State College of Florida Manatee-Sarasota on May 5, at University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee on May 8, at Ringling College on May 11, at Eckerd College on May 21 and at New College on May 26.
Few events in one’s life are as powerful and as portentous as undergraduate graduation ceremonies. Their power derives from the tension that inheres in their Janus-faced nature: they mark an end and a beginning; a culmination and a commencement; a finish and a rebirth. One face looks to the past, marking the graduate’s successful completion of a rite of passage. The other face looks to the future, celebrating the graduate’s transformation.