Scarlet Knighthood · 11:43pm May 16th, 2016
I don't usually discuss personal matters here, but this one is fairly major. To give you an idea how much so, let me tell you a story:
One of my first classes at Rutgers was held at the Busch Campus's Physics Lecture Hall. I had already examined the various exhibits before (including the Twinkie that had been exposed to open air a few years prior and showed no signs of decay beyond some loss of color,) and was looking for something to distract myself so my brain didn't tear itself apart with anxiety as I waited for the lecture hall proper's doors to unlock. So, I looked over the shoulder of someone on a laptop and saw him playing something fascinatingly surreal.
"What game is that?" I asked.
His answer: "Portal."
Yeah. I started college in 2006 and probably shouldn't have. Living with a roommate who thought it acceptable to mumble sweet notihngs to his girlfriend via cell phone until two or three in the morning didn't help. Me being me, I didn't think to actually say something to him until November, so he disrupted not just my circadian rhythm but also my pharmaceutical one. I soon found myself locked in a vicious cycle of not going to class because I was ashamed of not going to class. I also hoarded glass bottles for reasons that likely had something to do with the Legend of Zelda franchise.
I really wish I were making that up.
Needless to say, I bombed that semester hard. The rest of the decade consisted of bad decisions, shame cycles, horrible webs of lies, sabbaticals both voluntary and not, bureaucratic nightmares, three jobs of varying inherent dignity, and a series of events that led me to this fandom. Bit of a silver lining there; if everything had gone to plan, I'd have graduated before the show premiered without ever meeting the friends who got me into it. (Of course, surfing Fimfiction led to some of the later bad decisions. Call that the tarnish on the silver lining.)
But I persevered through it all, and now I am finally finished. Obama has spoken, the cannon has fired, and I'll be getting my diploma in the mail in July. To my complete lack of surprise, my first full day as an alumnus feels quite like my last full day as an undergraduate. (The day in between was rather more eventful.) I'm not sure what comes next, but I'm looking into it. The point is, I beat down a brick wall with my forehead, and I am rather pleased with myself. 
Congratulations!
Good for you.
That's great, Friend!
Take some pone for that forehead of yours.
Congratulations!
It's not easy getting through higher academics.
I found the years immediately after to be weirdly disillusioning as well, but then I may have had unrealistic expectations... I wanted to do "cool" stuff, but I'd been entirely too conservative and quiet to be anywhere in the vicinity of "cool." Later, I found ponies, and the balance was restored.
I wish you a smooth transition to whatever ventures come next.
Yeah, congratulations!
My brother graduated from Rutgers a year or two ago.
grats
Congrats!
Welcome to graduate life. Which is basically the same, only people won't do you the courtesy of a syllabus. ;) ... or choices in workload, come to think of it. You going on to grad school? If so, my sympathies and welcome to the siblinghood of the broke and overspecialized. ;)
About damn time! naw I kid
Congrats man
Congrats.
Congrats, man!
I'm so glad I'm not the only one.
I hoarded plastic water bottles so I could refill them over and over again. The more I collected, the less I would have to leave my dorm room during my weekly-ish water refill trip.
Graduating high-school is no way to prepare for college. Unfortunately, it seems for many the best way to prepare for college is to hit the brick-wall that is college head-first a few times. But don't worry, Real Life TM is much better than college.
Excelsior!
Dude my story is your story except a little bit later. The person who introduced me to ponies was my closet furry roommate who was good at procrastinating so he can play games until three in the morning every night but I was unable to and spend most of my one year of college either on Wikipedia or playing music or masturbating
Congratulations with your graduation and bits!
You are going into post-graduate studies/research now, yes? If so, here is hoping you get a good professor and a challengingly interesting project to work on!
Bad professors, unfortunately, will give you new insights into day in the life of Crystal Pony under King Sombra...
Congratulations. I'm so proud of you, and you should feel the same about yourself.
Congrats!
Congratulations, that's awesome!
Funny, your beginning years sound suspiciously like my second year, except the glass bottles I hoarded were disposed of (at great personal expense) by a private hazmat firm, since the LA County folks wouldn't touch em without involving the bomb squad. Ah, good times.
CONGRATULATIONS
This comment section is starting to look like the end of Evangelion, and I'm not helping: CONGRATULATIONS!
Conraturation! A winner is you!
Congratulations! If I might ask, what's your major in?
Grats too! That first year of college is a killer. I had five roommates my first year in the dorms. One showed up, introduced himself as from a community college, I asked him how many of his credits transferred, and when I came back to the room next, he was gone. My second year I only had two, because the first one (a freshman) flunked out hard after getting hooked on Dungeons and Dragons (my fault). My wife went from Valedictorian of her small school to just one of thousands of similarly brilliant people, and it almost made her flee back home, except she had met this rather weird boy in Accelerated Chemistry class...
I must confess to a certain curiosity to your major also.
MUCHO CONGRATS!! NOW GIVE ME MONEY!!
I think I've been in a very similar situation. I think I know how you felt.
Congratulations on getting to the other side!!
Congratulations! I'm glad your perseverance paid out, kudos.
We done, my good Sir, well done indeed
Many congratulations!
If I may ask, what did you major in, and end up as becoming?
Grats, FoME!
I can definitely relate to bad college decisions and attending college too early leading to ponies and stuff like that.
Here's hoping that I, too, can join the ranks of alumni in a couple years.
Congratulations on making it through all the ups and downs. In my experience the cycle just keeps going on as a graduate, but it's good to feel you can persevere. When you're on a high, then grab the moment and enjoy it while it's there.
Congratulations! "HUGS"
Congratulations
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I've already put up with ten years of this. There's no way I'm going to sign up for more right now. Maybe at some nebulous point in the future, but for now, I'm looking for work.
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It is comforting to know I'm not alone there, though at least you had a defined purpose for your hoarding...
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I can only hope you're joking.
3949706
They actually played a "Congratulations" montage at the commencement. For a moment, I was worried it had all been a trauma-induced delusion from my time spent piloting a giant armored alien cyborg powered by my mother's soul.
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Physics, with a computer science minor.
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Best of luck to you.
And, of course:
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Thank you all.
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Thanks.
You just had to sneak in there, didn't you?
Oh wait hold up.
huehuehue
Rutgers? A relative of mine went there. Pretty good! Hey, hey, hey, whatcha gonna do now, anyway?
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3950294
Whenever that happens to me, I just start making bombastic speeches out of Warhammer 40k and then my creepy dad decides it simply was not worth trying to get me to cause Instrumentality.
Sooooo... you wanna explain differential equations and vector calculus to me? I've forgotten most of the vector calculus I knew, and never learned diffequs.
Or can you tell me what major computing phenomenon appears in this picture of Pinkie Physics? mlpforums.com/uploads/post_images/img-3189252-1-thumb.jpg
3949472
TRUE FACTS.
3950294 I am in the same boat with the first notion, although I only spent 5 years fighting mine. Never again unless I absolutely have to. For now, I've got a steady job that produces enough income to hold me. I can only wish you the same.
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Entirely unintentional, I assure you.
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Try to get a job. I've been told my particular skill set is in fairly high demand, so it shouldn't be too excruciating.
But what do you do when your xeno-worshipping mother tries to feed the world to her alien cloth-god?
Vector calculus is relatively simple; you just ignore every variable but the one you're currently differentiating or integrating. (e.g. d/dx(2x + 2y) = 2 + C, since 2y is effectively a constant for the purposes of x.) If you need to deal with multiple variables at once, do them sequentially.
Differential equations was crossbred from calculus and polynomial equations. Instead of ax^2 + bx + c, you have ax'' + bx' + cx, where x is a multi-term expression in and of itself. I'm still not sure how I passed that class.
It looks Pinkie works at Apple, because that is 1 Infinite Loop.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2012/6/24/18678__safe_pinkie+pie_animated_reaction+image_baby+cakes_drums_cymbals_rimshot.gif
Congratulations!
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If you wanna PM me your LinkedIn or resume, I can give it a lookover. Let me know what kinda job you're looking for and what skills you have in specific.
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This is all the more special since you didn't just churn through four years for a degree -- what this piece of paper means is that you faceplanted, picked yourself back up, jumped back in, and kicked the ass of something that beat you the first time around.
That really means something.
Congratulations! More so than I can easily express. It's gonna be interesting seeing what the next phase of your life is going to hand you, but I know you're gonna be awesome.
I'm coming out of something similar; it's nice to see it worked out for you in the end.
Congratulations!
Ah! This is exciting news. Congrats Foamy!
Now brace yourself 
You opened a new door. New opportunities, yet new problems. Such is life. Here. I give you a gift. A pair of dodging pants. They have an armour save of 6+, but give you a +1 to your cover save. Also they sound silly. They are pants that help you dodge because clown pants help you combat roll faster? 
I haven't really worked that out yet.