With finals right around the corner, an impending spring and better weather on the horizon, campus is lively with chatter. While most of these students will return next fall to begin another year, the class of 2024 will graduate, moving on to bigger and better things!
No matter how you celebrate graduation — whether it is from college or kindergarten — festive music is always the common theme, both on the commencement stage and at the backyard party. While some celebrate the trials and tribulations of an undergraduate education, others herald what is to come.
Whether you are 22 and ready to finally hit the job market or 32 and just grateful that the return to school is finally over, celebrating the last four years needs a good soundtrack.
When you are done walking across the commencement stage, it is going to be an earworm. Yes, I’m talking about “Pomp and Circumstance.” Originally designed by Sir Edward Elgar for the coronation of King Edward VII in the early 1900s, the song is actually a series of marches. Schools within the Ivy League first began to adopt the song as their graduation anthem — Connecticut’s very own Yale being one of the first to do so in 1905 — and soon it spread.
With no words nor copyright, it’s an easy song to pick up and play. Though a little antiquated, the classical music has a majestic sound (even if it is played from tacky speakers) and makes students feel a pinch of pride as they grace the stage. All around, it is a solid classic and is here to stay.
An abrupt turn from the relative tranquility of classical music, we have “Good Riddance” by Green Day up next. A popular ballad by the punk or alt-rock band, the song is scattered with a few curses and the emotion of someone painfully eager to move on.
It speaks to the fact that we’ve met amazing people at college and have to accept that many will be parting ways. Raw with emotion, the tune concedes that we wouldn’t change a thing about the people we’ve come to know and love.
The John Hughes’ classic “The Breakfast Club” features our next graduation song, “Don’t You (Forget About Me).” The film details the weekend detention of a group of high school kids that form a cross section of adolescence: the jock, the punk, the goody two-shoes, the nerd and the introvert. Though initially detesting one another, the kids soon realize that they have a lot in common. By the end of the movie, the school bully has befriended the introvert, and this faintly upbeat, nostalgic ‘80s song plays in the background.
The kids know that as they return to the classroom, they may never interact again: after all, they each sit in their own parts of the lunchroom. Despite the juvenile high school vibes of the song and its context, I think it has a strong analogy to college.
At a big state institution, we are forced to encounter perhaps the most diverse group imaginable; as we graduate, we realize that back in the real world, we may never come in contact with one another again. This song recognizes that every person we have met along the journey has changed us in an immeasurable way that is sure to stay with us forever.
Whether you’re planning to walk across the stage this May or wistfully looking on, the journey awaits, so go ahead and seize the day!