Valedictorian, eventually

There is a photograph from my graduation at TIBS — class of 2024, valedictorian, gown slightly too short because confidence takes up room — and every time I look at it I hear the aunties from years ago asking my mother, with surgical concern, whether the boy was "still in school."

The boy was intermittently in school. School costs money, and money, as covered elsewhere in this journal, was busy. I studied in bursts, worked in between — carrying cables at Citizen TV as an intern, learning television from the floor up, literally, because the floor is where the cables live.

Here is what nobody tells you about a delayed education: you arrive at every class knowing exactly why you are there. The eighteen-year-olds were studying for exams. I was studying like the electricity bill depended on it, because at various points it had.

When they read my name first at graduation, my mother did not cry. She did something better: she looked around at the aunties. Slowly. A full panoramic sweep, like a broadcast camera. I have hosted live television for years and I have never delivered anything with that much precision.

So to everyone running late by somebody else’s calendar: the timeline is not the achievement. The arrival is. And arriving loud, with receipts — that is just style points.