Lots of things end with a bang, something very finite — lasting — where you feel the reverberations even when it is over.

Graduation is a lot like that. All your friends and family convene to celebrate. You buy an expensive white dress and wear a peculiar hat and robe. You walk across a stage and are handed a slip of paper worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Confetti, streamers, champagne; all the stops.

My graduation happened on March 27. It was none of those things.

It took place in Loveland, Colorado, in front of a couple thousand people. In a hockey arena, too — considering I’ve spent the majority of my college experience in rinks across the country, that part felt fitting, a poetic ode to the last four years of my life.

There was no celebrating, no regalia, no parents or family or friends. Just me, my laptop, some media folk I had made small talk with in the press box, and the big bold letters flashing on the scoreboard.

And that was it. That was the end.

I graduate from Cornell University on May 23, but I’ve already gotten my degree from The Cornell Daily Sun University. Every other thought in my mind over the last four years has had to do with covering Cornell men’s hockey for The Sun — story ideas, people to interview, film to analyze, tweets to send, stats to decode. This paper, and this role, was my whole entire life.

Sitting in the press box in Colorado, it did not feel like something so momentous was finally........

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