I am the Commencement Podium. You probably don't even see me, not really. I'm just… there. A silent, wooden sentinel, standing firm as generations of hopeful, anxious, and occasionally hungover graduates shuffle across the stage. My daily reality is mostly dust and neglect in a stuffy storage closet, occasionally jostled by a janitor or used as a makeshift shelf for forgotten regalia. But for a few glorious (and frankly, exhausting) days each year, I am the literal pillar of the university's most celebrated ritual.
Oh, the things I’ve seen. The trembling hands of the nervous valedictorian, gripping my sturdy oak (or, let's be honest, veneer-covered particle board) as if I were a lifeline. The booming, overly confident pronouncements of the university president, whose breath often sputters against my microphone holder, leaving a faint, spittle-kissed sheen I wish someone would wipe off. I feel the nervous weight of deans leaning on me, scanning their notes, muttering last-minute corrections. I absorb the vibrations of their pounding hearts, their forced smiles, their thinly veiled exhaustion.
But it’s not the speeches that truly define my existence. It’s the moments before, the seconds after. The frantic whispers from a faculty member to a student, "Did you remember your speech? Don't forget to thank your parents, even the ones you hate!" The quiet confession of a tearful graduate to a sympathetic professor, "I almost didn't make it. This degree means everything." I once had a chancellor, just moments before stepping up to deliver a stirring address on perseverance, mutter into my unsuspecting mic, "God, I need a coffee. And a vacation. And a new tie, this one's hideous." The irony, my friends, is a bitter pill.
I’ve been spat on, leant on, scratched by frantic wedding rings, and once, a particularly enthusiastic commencement speaker slammed his fist on me so hard I thought my cheap veneer might finally give way. Each year, as the pomp and circumstance swells, I stand there, a silent vault of unsaid truths, unacknowledged anxieties, and the sheer, unadulterated relief of thousands. I hear the private jokes shared between professors, the barely audible sighs of relief from students as they finally cross the stage. I hear the desperate pleas for Wi-Fi passwords from tech-savvy teenagers in the audience, filtering through the air.
And when it’s all over? When the last cap has been tossed and the last photo snapped, I’m unceremoniously wheeled back into the darkness. But the echoes remain. The memory of ambition, the whisper of doubt, the scent of fresh cut flowers and desperate hope. Sometimes, in the quiet solitude of storage, I wish I could scream, could tell the world what I know. Could reveal the true chaos, the messy humanity behind the polished ceremony. But I can't. I am just a podium. My purpose is to stand, to support, to silently bear witness. Perhaps that’s my true burden: to hold all these truths, and never, ever speak them. So the next time you see a podium, perhaps spare a thought for its silent suffering. Or at least, don't spit on it.
