Graduation & Return

Columbia University has a longstanding, and thoroughly inconvenient tradition of holding commencement on a Wednesday morning. As a result, after only seven weeks of work at my new job, I was forced to take three days off to return to New York City and fulfill the one requirement that my mother had stipulated upon my early graduation -- participating in commencement.

It was a nice break from things to get to head up to NYC and see my friends who were centrally located (probably for the last time ever). I left in the early hours of a grey Saturday morning in hopes of beating traffic out of the D.C. metro area. I’m not exactly sure what traffic I was hoping to beat, but that was my theory. I would have beaten all of the hypothetical traffic had there not been a crash involving some liquid-carrying truck that, as would have to happen, resulted in a spill on the highway.

There are very few things I hate more than driving. Which seems like a strange thing to say seeing as how much I’ve done it over the last four months. But, I don’t like how I feel my blood pressure rise, I don’t like how people will flick you off when they are in the wrong, and I don’t like sitting in traffic waiting for a liquid spill to be cleaned up for over two hours. There is only one thing that can ever calm me down in a situation like that one (or the time that I was stuck behind a wide load being escorted at 35 miles per hour in both lanes of a two lane highway in Pennsylvania). That one thing is my mother. So, I called my mom and she promised to talked to me until traffic got moving again. 75 minutes later I hung up the phone.
When I finally arrived in NYC, I had the whole weekend to see my friends (which I did), attend campus functions (which was a new experience for me since I had never done that as an undergrad), hunt down a cute boy or two that I had lost track of, and attend the very swanky Senior Ball.

Much alcohol was consumed, many stories swapped, much fun was had. And when my parents came into town with my 86 year old grandma and my brother, I relocated from the ruins of a college dorm suite to a far posher midtown hotel room.

All and all, the trip proved a success save the final couple hours where the family dynamic reached a head, but I don’t want to go into that. So, I hopped into my little car and whizzed (not in the peeing sense of the word) out of New York City with hopes of making it back to D.C. as quickly as possible (without procuring a speeding ticket) in order to attend the first event that I had worked on at my job.

After close to five hours of driving, I parked my car on S Street, right in front of the house, grabbed everything that had been thrown into my car during the last few days and bolted up the stairs where I changed into a suit and heels and then ran back out the door and on my way.
I frantically attempted to recall the address of the evening’s event and somehow concluded that it was 555 12th Street, NW. Within ten minutes I was parking in a garage and walking as fast as my heels would carry me. As I entered the lobby of the building I knew it wasn’t the right place. It was a scene taken right out of a classic movie. There I was ready to attend the event, and I was in the wrong place. In a frenzy I looked at the directory and the security guard spoke up and said “if you’re looking for Arnold & Porter, it’s at 555 13th Street.”

Without saying thank you, I bolted out the door and entered 555 13th Street which looks strikingly like the death star from Star Wars and could never be confused, from its interior, with the relatively low key lobby of 555 12th Street.

The discussion was in full swing as I found a seat and was grateful to have the chance to catch my breath. Little did I know what would lie ahead.