It was the late ’90s, and the Internet industry was booming. I should have followed suit until the diploma was in my hand, but instead I moved to San Francisco and got a job. They co-termed, rented apartments in Palo Alto, went to basketball games at Maples. Many of my classmates hung onto college a little longer than I did. However, most “fake graduates” have a solid plan to complete their coursework or thesis within a quarter or two.

It is a rite of passage, the end of an era. Graduation day is as much about the ritual as it is about receiving a diploma. I was definitely not the first person at Stanford to “walk” in the graduation ceremony without receiving a diploma, but I felt a bit like a fraud. I had completed all the major requirements for my degree in English, except one: a fourth-quarter language class. I had filled the distribution requirements. Thanks to my obstinacy, I joined my classmates in cap and gown in June of 1998, filed into Memorial Church, and was handed an empty envelope instead of a diploma. From the moment I set foot on the Stanford campus, I had no intention of slogging through a language course again.ĭespite a pleasant trip to Paris and some mildly troublesome degree requirements, I remained faithfully anti-French for four years. But I found verb conjugations and oral exams to be an exquisite form of agony. In my three years of language courses, there were a few shining moments, like reading The Little Prince or the annual end-of-the-year party, during which we would eat éclairs and watch a subtitled movie. Now that dear, old Madame Linford has returned to Paris and is safely out of earshot, I feel no fear admitting that I hated French in high school.

Me talk pretty some day