by Ashley Duke
The Hatch group met on September 26th with guest speaker Sarah Klenbort. As an ice breaker we each introduced ourselves; progress in our studies, what we write, what we read. As we went around the room it occurred to me that each member of the 2022 Hatch group is in our final year as undergrads. No one seemed to take note of this, but it triggered in me the feeling of being thoroughly immersed in a book only to realise there are a few pages left. We spoke of graduation being a rite of passage, and then the session went on to cover publishing, rejections, writing, and reading. My feeling of premature nostalgia did not return until I left our cosy nest in a meeting room next to the Writing and Society Research Centre and headed back to the carpark.
Graduations had been underway prior to the Hatch meeting, during the intra-session break. The university was quiet, only pockets of graduates and their parents or partners clustered around the stairs taking photographs of themselves. There were some familiar faces as I made my way through campus. I offered a congratulations, a handshake or two, and a what’ll you do next, and then headed for a coffee.
I’m moving overseas before the end of the year and I’ll likely miss my own graduation, for the second time. This time I have a better reason, at least. Walking through the Parramatta South campus knowing this could well be one of my last visits, stirs up similar nostalgic feelings. I have started trying to take notice of the little things at Western; reading the plaques scattered around about our university’s history, the social distancing posters on the floors that have begun to peel away, the distressed older buildings shoulder to shoulder with the new. In my first attempt here, I always felt disoriented, constantly checking which rooms I had to get to on a map and always running late. I never looked up to notice things like the beauty of heading into South Campus on foot.
I had to stop for fuel on my commute home. With the ever-increasing fuel prices, I’ve found myself picking which days to fill up and which to top up. I pulled in and saw diesel at $2.20 a litre and put in enough to get to work and back the next day. It’s an odd feeling paying for less than a full tank again. The cashier said nothing, of course, he just read out the total, scanned my loyalty card and watched me pay, but I felt all the old shame from when I used to do this out of necessity. It has been over a decade since I first started at WSU, a time when I had to pay for fuel with coins, but somehow being close to graduation brings back threads like this, like a ruler bent back on itself.
After a short hiatus, I returned to university and to WSU to improve my writing and to prove something to myself. I also made three commitments that would keep me on the right track: attend every class, get through all set readings, put in my absolute best for each assessment. The old me, the pending-dropping-out me, would have sneered at someone doing this; there were easier paths to graduation. It would be dishonest to claim I upheld these commitments entirely, but overall, I have sustained the effort.
It seems a shame to miss graduation, my rite of passage. If I was staying in Australia I would, of course, attend. I’d frame a picture of me in the robes and the cap and put it in my home office. I’d send a copy to my parents. Things to prove which end of the ruler I’m on. It would be a shame not to document the classes, the readings, and the assessments done, the friends made, the Hatch sessions attended, but, for me, worrying about the documentation misses the point.