Graduating College and the Last Weeks

Well everyone, after 4 and a half years, 9 total semesters, I am fully graduated. Boy, this was a journey. I had some really crazy classes, really fun adventures, and all sorts of fun and stress. You can look through the last 4 years of posts if you want to remember the fun. But this isn't a time to talk about all the old times, I already have. Today, I'm going to talk about the ending of it all.

Lets go back to the week before finals. This was when I had the last meetings of all my clubs. With my students for life club, we had a nice Christmas party where we listened to Christmas music, ate snack foods, made baby blankets to donate to the crisis pregnancy center that Brandi volunteered for, and were our overall goofy selves. I played Veggie Tales Christmas Silly Songs (Oh Santa and 8 Polish Foods Of Christmas) and Bob and Doug McKenzi's 12 Day of Christmas. Since we're like an unofficial Christian group (all the members just happen to be Catholic), everyone recognized the Veggie Tales songs, and then the older guys in the group thought Bob and Doug's 12 Days of Christmas was funny because of the "on the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a beer." Good final time with them.

At my last filmmakers club meeting, I gave a going away speech as the last OG member. I gave a history of the club from the beginning, and how all the events impacted me and the group as a whole for better or worse. It was a really moving speech, and a great way to say fair well to the club that kept me from just being surrounded by engineers 24/7. At my Pokemon club we had a little pizza party, and I brought book marks for all the club members. These were official scholastic book fair Pokemon bookmarks my mom got to give to her students, but she said "no, my son and his Pokemon club will appreciate these more than my students," and they did. We played some Pokemon TCG, and then played smash bros and Pokemon Stadium. I dominated at the minigames, for the most part. There were some games where the input lag on the HDTV screwed me over, and I was like "I want a rematch, on a CRT. Lets go out to the smash players with their CRT's and play without input lag." Yeah, that's me. We didn't though, and I still won. Afterwards I tried selling some of my duplicate amiibo, but that failed. Oh well. Anyone want to buy Sonic new in box?

Finals pre-weekend I did what I always do, lock my self in my dorm and study like crazy. I did, for the most part. I only had 3 REAL finals considering that 1 final was a presentation (Tri-Z) and another was a guided discussion (Health and Wellness). Saturday I studied for Digital Logic, and Sunday I studied for Mechanics of Materials and History of the World. I probably should have divided them up more evenly since History and Mechanics were the harder subjects. Oh well. I ultimately did well in all my classes. My Tri-Z presentation went well, and I got my ISM challenge coin afterwards. That presentation was on Monday, my only test Monday. I did help my one friend study for digital logic on Monday. He somehow got a bootleg copy of the final from last year, and we studied off that. I helped him by showing him how to do those problems, and it helped me by having to teach the material.

On Tuesday I had Digital Logic and Health and Wellness finals. Digital Logic was one of the easiest tests I've ever taken. We had 2 hours to do the test. I was done in 45 minutes. It wasn't just because the test was almost identical to the one from the previous year, but because I was just so prepared. Boy, a 2000 level class is REALLY simple when you're used to 4000 (almost 5000) level classes. Then the discussion for Health and Wellness was really easy, just talk about the semester as a class. After the final some friends and I went to McDonald's to get Pokemon Happy Meals. Yeah, 3 college students, 1 a graduating senior, went to get Pokemon Happy Meals. We were a sight. It was great to hang out with them outside of a classroom setting. I'm going to keep in contact with them.

On Wednesday I had my Mechanics of Materials and World History finals. Mechanics I was confident, but kind of unjustly so, because I only knew about half of the stuff on it for sure, and the other half I kind of knew the general concept. Ultimately I think I did well enough considering that I got an A in the class. Whatever. In my history class I think I also did fairly well, even though I just kept cramming and cramming without much results. I went to the room an hour beforehand in hopes that it would keep me from getting distracted. It kind of did, but not really. I still got an A though. That night my friend since freshman year and I hung out to celebrate the end of finals and film a parody theme song for Pokemon based on engineering. I'll get that uploaded at the end of the week. Fun time.

Now for Thursday. On Thursday the only big thing was going to pick up my brother. He was getting a ride to about where my college was. OK, it was like 50 miles from my college, but closer than his college at the other end of the state. He and I did some packing, but mostly hung out. We watched a James Bond film until he passed out from exhaustion on my futon.

Friday is when the festivities really began. First of all I had to get my brother's ticket for graduation. I showed up to the ticket counter at about 9 AM, told them my name and how many tickets I needed, and then went on my way. My dad got up to my school around noon, and we were moving out my stuff. I was planning on checking out on Saturday, but because I didn't go through the necessary steps, I had to move out on Friday. Whoops. Oh well, we were able to get it all out and in the vehicles. Not long before I was all done my mom arrived after dropping my grandparents off at the hotel. She moved some things. After getting all my stuff out, I went through the procedure to check out and turn in my keys. I said bye to my dorm room of 2 and a half years. It was alright. After that we went to the hotel and picked up my grandparents for my honors college chord presentation. I graduated with honors and got honors chords to show it. There was a little ceremony where we were presented with our chords. It was a nice little ceremony, and my mom got to see the parents and grandparents of my one friend who is the cousin of one of her friends. It's a really small world. We met in calc 2, and by coincidence my mom found out that he's the cousin of some of her old college friends. Yeah, funny how life is. At the ceremony we have someone important to our college journey present us with our chords. I had my grandma give me my chords.

After the ceremony, we made our Christmas card photo with me in my graduation get-up and my parents and brother. After the picture, we went right to Costco to get them in so they would be ready the next day. However, since it was a really slow night, they said they would be ready in an hour. So we ordered our pizza and waited. For some reason this kid just walked up to me and started talking with me about Pokemon. I asked him "do I know you?" and he said "maybe, you look familiar." My mom found it very surreal since the kid dressed and acted like me at that age, and was very into Pokemon. I tried to be as uncreepy as possible, since he was like 10 years younger than me and I was a stranger, but I also didn't want to be all "go away kid." It was really weird.

On Saturday, it was the main event. It's all been leading up to this. I wake up, eat breakfast with my family, and get fully dressed for the occasion (freshly ironed gown, honors stole, 2 sets of honors chords, and hat with 2 tassels, one for my college and one for my university). We drive up to the auditorium to drop my grandparents and I off. I had to go check in. I found my way to the graduate area. After finding the right place for my college, I got my things and found a seat. I looked for friends to sit next to, but none of my friends had showed up yet. I'm really glad I brought my 3DS with me. After about 15 minutes one of my good college friends showed up. We talked for the other 15 minutes while we waited. Nothing super earth shattering, just some nerd small talk. I filled out the card for getting graduation pictures once those came around. All went well.

Well now it's time to march us out. I was expecting alphabetical order, but instead they called our names when we gave them the card with our names on it, which made it fun to sit next to friends, but hard to coordinate when to take snapshots of the event. I set-up a text to tell my brother to get ready when I was next. Before we walked into the auditorium I got my picture taken back stage. We walked out into the auditorium and got some speeches. They were nice speeches. The best was when the president of the university used the meme that surrounds him. It was great. I walk back stage, get in line, tell the people calling the names my name, and then walk out. I had my family cheer for me, shook hands with the university president while receiving my $100,000 piece of paper, shook hands with the dean of the engineering college while receiving my engineering challenge coin, shook hands with my professors that were there, and hug the lady that works in the admission office. It was great to walk. Afterwards I made some jokes to my friend, like when the president said "by the power vested in me by this institution, I now pronounce you graduates," when I leaned over and said "you may now kiss the diploma," and also when there was a 3rd "the third" I leaned over and said "that's the third third." Great ceromony.

So after the ceremony I was tasked with finding my family. I ran into the same friend that I filmed the engineer Pokemon parody with. He somehow got a ticket to see the graduation. I gave him a hug and thanked him for being there. In true style, he said "no problem bro, I'm glad I could be here." I found my family not to hard, and we took some pictures and went out to lunch. I invited my friend, and he came to say hi to my family, but he wasn't able to stay. My family liked him, and he liked them. At the restaurant he thanked me for the academic help and I thanked him for the "have some fun" help. Another friend to keep contact with.  After lunch we went back to the hotel room and relaxed. I opened up my graduation cards later that evening.

Sunday was the last of the graduation festivities. We went to my student church, me dressed in my graduation get-up. Hey, I spent around $100 on this, so I'm going to get some wear out of it. I got recognized as a graduate as well as other graduates. After church we went to get some final pictures, basically recreating the ones I took as an incoming freshman, but with my cap and gown. After that I drove home, alone. The last thing of mentioning with regards to graduation is how I wore my cap and gown tor my other grandpa who wasn't able to make it to the graduation. He got to put my honors chords on me, and pull me around by them like a pack animal. Just some fun.

Man, this was crazy. It's weird knowing that I won't be going back to school at the end of my little break. Right now I'm working on fining a job, and my prospects seem OK.

Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

I'm now an official Pokemon trainer

Hey everyone, today I just joined an official Pokemon League. Today was the first meeting of the new Pokemon fans RSO at my college, which is also an official Pokemon TCG/Video Game League. That means that if I complete the required amounts of matches, I get official Pokemon league stuff. I do have a bit of a problem regarding that though, I don't have any Pokemon video games up here at college with me and most of my cards, also at home, are near mint vintage from back in the 90s. I have some garage sale cards but from what I recall, they're all also really good quality. Plus I have all my cards organized by Pokemon or card. I'm going to need to go through them to find some lower quality garage sale cards.

With that I also don't know how to play. I would have learned if the thing at my school was playing, and not collecting. I still have all my "how to play Pokemon TCG" books from back when I bought the cards those 10+ years ago, so I'll work at learning over the summer. I'll also look into getting some "for game" purpose cards off eBay or amazon. When buying those "100 assorted Pokemon cards," I can't imagine them being of super high quality.

If you want to find me, my user name is "pokematiconline," because naturally "pokematic" was already taken. I know there's TCG online and I hope to enjoy that.

I kind of wish that I knew about this earlier, because then I would have kept my vintage Pokemon Adventures chapter here and not send it home. At least I would have had something to show off my enthusiasm.

Now for my history with Pokemon.

I set out on my Pokemon journey when I was 6. I remember the first episode I ever saw, The Problem with Paras. I believe it was at Cedar Point. It was all the rage when I was 5 and it was everywhere. As mentioned earlier, I set out on my journey when I was 6. I collected the cards, and put them in a binder. I the games, but was never really good at them, mainly because it was very text based and couldn't read at the time. I loved the Burger King toys and still have all of them, including the deadly Pokeballs. But my main love, was the anime. I remember when it aired on Kids WB and UPN every morning before school. Pokemon was actually the first anime both my parents let me watch. Dad let me watch Sailor Moon, but mom wasn't cool with it. It was always the morning, and never the afternoon. I lost touch with pokemon when I was 7 or so, mainly because it was no longer on in the morning on kids wb, only after noon. From what I recall, KWB stopped doing morning Pokemon right after Orange Islands ended and Johto was about to begin. Unfortunately for me both my parents worked and I had to go to an after school program at my elementary school. They didn't do Pokemon, except for the one time that they showed Pokemon the first movie. Because I was unable to keep up, I never got into Johto. I never got rid of my Pokemon stuff, partly due to my pack-rat nature as a kid. I kept in touch with the movies and still bought cards when they were cheap at garage sales, but we didn't really hear from each other, until much later.

I reconnected with Pokemon once the original kanto region episodes started airing on Cartoon Network. I would watch those old episodes every night at 7pm. It was a bit weird because Pokemon was always a morning thing, but whatever. Then the episodes started airing in the morning before school, just like when I little. I wish that they showed the Johto episodes, but unfortunately no. They did do new episodes every Saturday, so I went to the end of the Hoen region episodes. For the longest time I was able to keep up with the Sinoh episodes. Somehow I was unable to keep up, but I still love Pokemon. Now I'm really into collecting. When McDonald's did their Pokemon promotion, I made sure to collect them all, and keep them NIB, new in box. I guess it's not technically a full collection because there were 8 toys and 10 cards, so there are 80 different variations of card toy combinations, but I don't have that kind of time, and with the cards typically being covered, I wouldn't be able to know if I had it unless I opened it.

I got into the manga when I was in high school. The first one I ever read was the Gingies rescue adventure what was in Nintendo Powers. I even read all 8 volumes of Pokemon DP Adventures for an independent reading project for school. I gave a presentation as Hareta, complete with costume I made out of a pair of cargo jeans, a white undershirt, an inside-put tuxedo vest I got from the Salvation Army, and a red paperboy hat. Because Hareta was raised by Pokemon, including Manky, he had a tendency to climb things. I got permission from my teacher to jump on top of her desk in the front of the class. It was a great presentation.

Over all, I guess I embraced the idea of "Gotta Catch Them All" more than anything about Pokemon. I was into the collecting and not really the playing. Wish me luck because this will be awesome. This has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.