The Massive Post-Post-Graduation Site Update

Here I am, as timely as ever, writing my "I graduated!" blogpost. Well, I did it! On June 9th, 2022, I walked across the stage at the CCI Commencement in the morning, then celebrated at the University wide commencement at Citizens Bank Park. I'm still working on collecting all the photos from the day, but I do have a few.

I do want to take the time to appreciate my "Self Made Man" cap since I worked quite hard on it and it does have some sentimental value. Wikipedia says "'Self-made man' is a classic phrase coined on February 2, 1842 by Henry Clay in the United States Senate, to describe individuals whose success lay within the individuals themselves, not with outside conditions". I can't say that any success is individual. I am endlessly thankful for my countless incredible colleagues and friends that helped me achieve all I did. I'm lucky to call many of them my family now. I did deal with quite the absurd amount of "outside conditions" that did affect me, but never stopped me from having an exemplary undergraduate career. A lot of my "outside conditions" I faced were as a result of my identity as a transgender man. So the term "self made man" now serves as a bit of a double entendre. As a trans man, I've had to make my own masculinity from an "analyzing my identity" perspective with a little dash of "I inject testosterone" sort of way. Hence, the trans flag as a background. I also want to take the time to acknowledge how long it took for my to freehand paint the Computer Modern font. I'm proud of this cap.

Since June, I've been trying to update my site to reflect this massive accomplishment. I probably could've completed this task by the end of June if graduation were as simple as walking across a stage. Turns out, closing a chapter of your life and starting a new one takes a much more time and effort than a commencement ceremony. Since June, I've graduated, started working part-time and remotely as a CCI DEI Council Coordinator, started to (and currently continue to) manage many medical concerns, and decided to move to Berkeley, CA with my twin. Then, in August, I actually moved to Berkeley, CA with my twin which included an eight day long road trip from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh to Columbus to Chicago to Lincoln to Denver to Salt Lake City to Reno to Berkeley. This was then followed with a month long road trip to IKEA to IKEA to IKEA to... Now, we're finally getting ourselves situated. We have a mostly functional, mostly unpacked apartment with a partially figured out chore chart and semi-consistent planned grocery trips. I'm still working out some health things, but that hasn't stopped me from working part-time remotely or applying for a more local position for the future. Some may say that I've been "busy".

One of my many to-dos has been making my first ever CV. It's been a really fun process to go through my college career and write down everything I've accomplished. I has already been working on updating my website, but as I read through years of emails and social media and reflected on my time at Drexel, I realized how much I missed. Turns out, I have quite a bit more updating to do. In the meantime as I work on finishing those updates, this has been my nice celebratory blogpost. Hopefully, this isn't the last.