I wrote a novel for my degree, and I'm very happy I didn't submit that to a publisher. I sympathize with my professors who had to read it.
The federal government requires that its loans be paid back within 10 years of graduation, and Harvard has pegged its loans to the same 10-year timetable. Yet despite Harvard's low default rate, the idea of years of loan debt is daunting for some students even before it's time to pay back.
Following graduation from high school in 1948, I attended Harvard University where I became a physics major. Having grown up in a small town, I found Harvard to be an enormously enriching experience. Students in my class came from all walks of life and from a great variety of geographical locations.
From daycare to graduation, our education system stacks the odds against the poor. Predicted grades is just one of many hurdles that are set a little higher for those whose parents do not have the money to smooth their path in life or the inside knowledge of how the system works.
I've always been short and stocky. So when I got into repertory theatre after graduation, I found myself doing character roles: because of my deep voice, shape and height, I was playing 40-year-old, 50-year-old roles at the age of 23.
I started traveling, performing, doing photo shoots and working on new music. At the same time, I was juggling homework and trying not to miss out on too many experiences during my junior and senior years - like prom and graduation.
I vividly remember my first meeting with Farooque Shaikh. It was in 1975. I had just returned from New York after completing my graduation and was looking for opportunities to begin a career as an actor.
We had an argument, and he told me to be home at midnight, and I said no. And so when I did come home, the door was locked. And I had gotten a set of luggage for graduation that day, and it was on the front porch, packed. He thought that he was going to prove a point and I was going to say, 'Oh, I'm sorry, Daddy, I'm sorry'.
The day after my high school graduation in 1952, I headed to Alaska. I was 17. I started out greasing equipment, then became a heavy-crane operator. I made and saved good money there for two years.
I was on the yearbook staff, so I would take out film cameras and Nikons and take photos around school and at sporting events and things like that. We had a darkroom as well. I just loved it. I also saved up for a video camera to video my friends and cut and paste the videos together and I gave them to all of my friends for graduation.
From kindergarten to graduation, I went to public schools, and I know that they are a key to being sure that every child has a chance to succeed and to rise in the world.
After graduating in the summer of 1980, I knew I wanted my life to count.
By the time he arrived in Texas - via the red 1947 Studebaker Dad's parents gave him as a graduation gift - he was ready for the challenge of making his way in the oil business.
Yeah, I spent about 20 years in a dorm room. It took me a while to graduate.
In the summer we graduated we flipped out completely, drinking beer, cruising in our cars and beating up each other. It was a crazy summer. That's when I started to be interested in girls.
God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas, but for scars.
I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.
The knowledge of languages was very useful. I have a university degree in foreign languages and literature.
I would say the most memorable thing that has ever happened to me has to be when I got my First class honours Law degree at my University graduation. All my family from all over the world were there when I collected my degree. I will never forget that day.
Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.
Everybody wants you to do good things, but in a small town you pretty much graduate and get married. Mostly you marry, have children and go to their football games.
I got all my work done to graduate in two months and then they were like, I'm sorry, you have to take driver's ed. I just kind of went, Oh, forget it.
I studied mechanical engineering at Princeton and worked on solar energy after graduation.
When I was going for my graduate degree, I decided I was going to make a feature film as my thesis. That's what I was famous for-that I had my thesis film be a feature film, which was 'You're a Big Boy Now.'
I learned law so well, the day I graduated I sued the college, won the case, and got my tuition back.
Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated.
Upon graduation, believe it or not, I had no job. I had no interviews. I had no prospects. I had no worries. What I did have, I had passion. I had enormous passion. I had passion for financial markets. I had fallen in love with financial markets.
After graduation, I wanted to work for 'Sassy', which I loved, but it had folded. So I wound up at 'Seventeen' for three years on staff and two as a contributor, and I wrote these great stories that nobody ever believes 'Seventeen' does. Serious stories for teens about social justice issues - gun control, migrant farm workers.
I'm not sure if they do this in the States, but in Korea, until high school, on your graduation diploma there's a line that states your future goal. Kids write 'president' or 'astronaut,' or whatever. I always wrote 'singer.'
My father, who was from a wealthy family and highly educated, a lawyer, Yale and Columbia, walked out with the benefit of a healthy push from my mother, a seventh grade graduate, who took a typing course and got a secretarial job as fast as she could.
Mentors provide professional networks, outlets for frustration, college and career counseling, general life advice, and most importantly, an extra voice telling a student they are smart enough and capable enough to cross the stage at graduation and land their first paycheck from a career pathway job.
You know what has made me the happiest I've ever been? Seeing my son and daughter graduate from college. More than wanting them to be educated, I wanted them to be nice people. To see that they have become both is just a wonderful thing.
When I graduated from Santa Monica High in 1927, I was voted the girl most likely to succeed. I didn't realize it would take so long.
Each year India and China produce four million graduates compared with just over 250,000 in Britain.
One half who graduate from college never read another book.
I went to my son's graduation this weekend, and I heard a great quote I've never heard before from Albert Einstein. It was that the greatest danger to the world is not the bad people but it's the good people who don't speak out.
Following graduation from Amherst, a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship enabled me to test the depth of my interest in literary scholarship by beginning graduate studies at Harvard University.
Just after graduation in 1966, like many of my contemporaries, I applied for research training at the National Institutes of Health. Perhaps because his wife was a poet, Ira Pastan agreed to take me into his laboratory, despite my lack of scientific credentials.
This man used to go to school with his dog. Then they were separated. His dog graduated!
Even though I didn't get a business degree, I enjoyed learning about economics.
I've done photo shoots for fashion brand catalogues and participated in graduation shows for fashion colleges.
We are living in 1937, and our universities, I suggest, are not half-way out of the fifteenth century. We have made hardly any changes in our conception of university organization, education, graduation, for a century - for several centuries.
I was in Mumbai pursuing my graduation in mass media; I was not sure what to do. I tried my hand at a couple of different things. I joined an acting school after that and eventually things fell in place.
I did freelance cartooning off and on from college graduation in 1991 through ABC News hiring me in 2003. I did a weekly comic strip for 'Roll Call' for about nine years. I sold cartoons and caricatures to 'The Los Angeles Times' and 'The Washington Post.' I drew as much as I could. It's really tough to make a living doing it.
It was only when I finished the course and left my graduation diploma on the bus that I realised I'd become an actor.
I dropped out of school for a semester, transferred to another college, switched to an art major, graduated, got married, and for a while worked as a graphic designer.
Yale places great stress on undergraduate and graduate teaching. I like teaching, and I do a lot of it.
People in my family and camp who grew up listening to rap music love 'We Are Young.' I've heard it play at weddings. I've heard it in graduation parties. It's a big idea and big song.
I did my graduation in hospitality in Jaipur. When I was working, I started getting offers in modeling and did a few South films.
I went to Legoland in Denmark when I was five, I think, but I went to Germany when I was 17 to have a little adventure after graduation.