Officially have a diploma now, wherever it ends up — I think it's still in the mailing envelope somewhere on my desk, haven't opened it. Skipped the ceremony, told my parents it wasn't my thing, which is half true, the other half being that I couldn't justify the week it would've taken away from actual work for something that felt like a formality years after the part of my life that mattered had already moved on to something else. Weird timing, graduating into a spring where half my classmates' group chats are about a Silicon Valley Bank collapse rattling the tech job market and the other half are only talking about Taylor Swift tour dates. I fall into neither conversation, which used to bother me more than it does now. Six years since the paper. Feels like it should feel like more of a milestone than it does. Mostly it just feels like Tuesday, except with slightly better weather and a diploma I haven't opened.