He did it! He graduated! Congratulations to Peter! The entire weekend of May 3rd was spent celebrating.
I had been stressed for quite some time about the entire weekend. We had two ceremonies to attend, two family meals, and a roommate and families grad party. I was nervous about parking, making our dinner and lunch reservations, getting the food for the party, etc. I was so stressed that I typed up an itinerary (which I then proceeded to call an agenda the entire weekend) and emailed it to everyone so we would all be at the right place at the right time. And I did a lot of praying.
I prayed many times for God to take over - to handle it all. And every time I would give it to him, I would immediately pick it up and start worrying again. Finally, on Wednesday afternoon, I told him that I was REALLY and TRULY giving it to Him. That He was in charge and that I was just going to enjoy the weekend and relax. And at that moment, he said, "Girl, it's about time. I've been waiting on you to let me help you. All of your worry is in vain." And I could finally relax.
On Friday morning, Sarah got home (she still had exams the next week but luckily she was able to spend the weekend with us in Raleigh). We headed to Raleigh around 1:15pm with my mom and brother following behind us.
We made it to the hotel, got checked in, and quickly changed clothes before heading to campus. Peter's department graduation was Friday night at 6:00. I had been stressed that the parking situation would be a nightmare. There were multiple department ceremonies going on all over campus all weekend and I had heard from the parent Facebook page that getting in and out of the parking garages were taking forever.
But what do you know. We rolled up to the parking garage, where there was a long line just to get into it, and my brother looked to our right and said, "Why can't we just park here?" There were some spaces where you needed to have a sticker from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. It was 5:05! and there were some empty spots! We parked there and low and behold Cathy and Eric happened to be behind us a little ways and found a similar non parking garage spot! We all met up and walked in together with Peter who had a friend drop him off. I immediately thanked God because parking at this event was one of the things that I had been worrying about.
Before we took our seats for the ceremony and Peter took his spot in the holding room with the other graduates we tried to get a picture on the seal. The seal is in the middle of Tally which is the student union. Superstition has it that if you walk on the seal during your time at State, you won't graduate. All the students avoid stepping on the seal. And on graduation night, they were lined up to get their picture on it. We waited in the line for a bit but were worried about being late so we got out of line and took our seats in the ball room and Peter took his place with the other graduates. I disappointed that he wasn't going to get his picture on the seal. But guess what? Immediately after we left the ceremony, on our way out to get some family pictures, there was no one on the seal so we got our picture! And just moments after we got our picture, another long line of kids was forming to get theirs!
I had been stressed about making our dinner reservation Peter's ceremony was at 6:00, the reservation was at 8:00. I wanted to get family pictures, we had to get out of the parking garage, get downtown, get parked in another parking garage, etc. I knew it was going to be close. But, because we weren't in the garage, we had plenty of time and actually made it our reservation a few minutes early. That's another huge praise and one more thing that I had been stressed about but God worked it out.
We had a very tasty dinner at Birdie's downtown. After dinner, we headed back to our respective hotel rooms to get to bed because we had to be up early the next morning for the big graduation at Carter-Finley Stadium.
My mom and brother weren't going to this ceremony so they headed back home Saturday morning. Sarah had a lot of work to do for finals so she stayed at the hotel working on a paper that was due on Monday. Dan and I and Cathy and Eric were scheduled to leave our hotels by 7:30am. Cathy and Eric, being better at schedules than Dan and I, left right on time. Dan and I got held up in the hotel Starbucks because there was a line. It was a Starbucks so I should have factored in that there would be a line.
But thanks to Cathy and Eric being on time, they got seats for us that were very close to the stage and were in the shade. In addition, they were able to get us actual seat with backs. They have them scattered randomly around the stadium but they were able to get some. That was a huge benefit because basically we were sitting in that one spot for over three hours without moving and the seat backs made it much more comfortable.
The graduating class had 6900 kids in it! Based on our rough counts and calculations of the chairs on the football field, it looks like they were prepared for 4200 of them to attend. There were probably (based on my rough estimation 600 or so empty seats. I don't think they have ever done a school wide graduation before and I'm very glad we attended. It felt so special to be celebrating with so many people.
Another wonderful thing about the seats Cathy and Eric chose was that Peter and his friends were actually sitting almost directly in front of us! That was definitely another God moment! There were four lines of graduates processing in through four different stadium entrances. Peter and his friends got in the line that unbeknownst to him put them right in front of us. We were texting the whole time they were processing in and were waving wildly when we spotted each other. It was so funny because everyone was doing that with their graduates. Also, it took 25 minutes for them all to process in and that's with four lines!
The ceremony was long but thankfully the only people that walked the stage were the PHD candidates. But it went by quickly and we were in the shade for most of it and we had seats with backs so it was all good. The best part was the speaker. His name was Daryl Caudle and he is an Admiral in the US Navy with over 100,000 troops and personnel currently reporting to him as Commander of the US Fleet Forces. He's originally from Winston-Salem and he graduated from NC State 40 years ago. And in It's Such A Small World moment - Eric has actually met him through a mutual friend and had dinner with him recently! How cool is that?!
The Admiral was an excellent speaker. At the end of his speech, I turned to Dan and said that I was fired up and felt like I needed to go out and do something great with my life! After the ceremony when we were at lunch, Peter said all of his friends felt fired up as well from the speech and talked about how awesome the speech was. So, we tasked Eric with getting that message back to the Admiral through their mutual friend.
After the ceremony, Dan and I, thanks to being late to our original plan, actually had good parking spots to get out of the stadium quickly. We were able to get to the Trophy Brewing and Pizza on time for our reservation. (This was yet another stress point I had going into the weekend that God worked out for me.) Joe picked up Sarah and got her there on time and Cathy and Eric got there in plenty of time even though they had a harder time getting out of the stadium. The pizza and beer were delicious and we had a lovely lunch celebrating our new grad.
Then we had work to do. We had to pick up a keg for the roommate/family party, get the table and chairs set up in the back yard, and get the food from Sam Jones BBQ. (There's a whole side story that I won't go into because it's boring but it did leave me with a lot of stress leading up to the event which again, turned into no need to worry.) But the food was delicious so we will stop there. Well, let me just quickly add, if you want to use Sam Jones to cater an event, do so by all means but do not try to go through their catering coordinator. She will not return your multiple emails or multiple phone messages. Just call the restaurant directly. ;)
We spent the evening hanging out with Peter's roommates and their families and then all of their friends started pouring in after dinner so we finished out Peter's college career with a keg party.It was the perfect end to a perfect weekend.
The next morning we went to Mass and then had lunch at Lobera Tacos and Tequila. We stuck with the tacos and stayed away from the tequila. After lunch we dropped Peter back off at his apartment and we headed home.
It was a wonderful weekend celebrating our new graduate! I couldn't have asked for a better weekend. When I finally stopped worrying and let God take over, everything worked out perfectly. Now I just need to remember this lesson moving forward.
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| Graduation Announcement |
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| Processing in to the Department Graduation |
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| At NC State, even the graduations are red! |
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| Four years of not stepping on the seal paid off! |
The roommates and their families! Such a great group of guys.
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| The roommates. |
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| Owen, Peter, Cal, Harris |
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| Seniors, brothers, friends. Go Pack! |
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