My phone vibrates off the counter.  I go over and pick it up, looking at the caller id.

“Hey Lauren! Long time no see!”  I say, talking to my friend from ISU; she now lives in Chicago.

“Did you get it?”  Lauren says; our relationship extends beyond the normal greetings.

“Get…what?”  I say slowly looking around my apartment at a joke I must have missed.

“Your diploma!”  She breathes, hardly able to contain her excitement, “I got mine!”

“No, but I haven’t been looking for it,”  I say, thinking of the table downstairs in the apartment complex’s foyer that contains all of the packages that the landlord brings in during the day.   I snatch up my key, put on my sandals and run downstairs.

“It looks gothic, actually,” Lauren starts, going into a lengthy discussion of how it came in a flat package that said ‘Do Not Bend’ on the front.

I run down the stairs and turn the corner, almost sending the coffee table in the apartment complex’s foyer flying, as I cross the room to the table containing the packages.  On top lays a flat manilla envelope, alone on the large table.

Finally, the moment that I have been waiting for.

I remember what someone once told me after I was feeling very annoyed, as I was racking up all of this debt and having so much homework, “In the end, once you get that piece of paper it will all be worth it”.

I pick up the manilla envelope gently, reading the label that says “Do not bend” written in red ink.  The envelope is in pristine condition, hardly any dirt.  I read the label, letting every part of this moment sink in.

“To Mr. Trevor…”

I read the label again.  This package is not for me.   It’s for a Trevor that lives in apartment 101.  Lucky bastard.

“Jillian?”  I hear Lauren’s voice, bringing me to the present.  “Did you get it?”

“Naw,”  I say, laying the manilla envelope down carefully, in it’s original face up position, “When’d you get yours?”

“Over a week ago, for sure,”  Lauren says.  I frown.

I tell Lauren about the guilt I had after getting a C and a D on all of the Business Finance tests, and then scoring an 89 out of 89 on the Final (including the curve).   I actually just finished reading the textbook for that Business Finance class and doing all of the homework problems.  There’s a long silence on the phone.

“You’re serious?”

“All I have to say is that I’d better get this damn diploma,”  I grumble.  Guilt can be harsh at times, and, I’ve been bored.

I tell Lauren that maybe it is because of the address change, but Lauren reminds me that she too changed her address, and her diploma arrived awhile ago.  We hang up shortly afterward, and I’m stricken with images of graduating and ISU ripping the diploma case out of my hands and saying there has been a mistake.

Maybe I forgot to pay for something, that’s been known to happen to other graduates.  Maybe, I think, panic coursing through me, maybe I really didn’t get a proper grade for all of my classes, and I have to retake something…maybeeeee…

I stop, and pick up the phone to call my mother, who is on vacation; this is more important than some silly vacation at Myrtle Beach.

After lengthy hellos where she describes how the trip out there went (they drove), I tell my mother about my fears from ISU, and how Lauren has received her diploma and I have not.

“Well, you got your diploma in the mail…” My mother says, after I finish talking about my fears about not passing my classes, “It was what…I think about a week ago!”

“Ma’!  Come onnnnnn; I’m freaking out over here and all you can say is that you received it in the mail at the house a week ago?”

“Yesssss, well, I am doing something to it as a surprise!”  She exclaims.

“Oh,”  I say.  There are only so many things that one can do with a diploma, and number one is getting it framed

“Thank you,”  I say awkwardly, “How does it look?”

She says that it looks nice and professional.  Her first child to get any sort of college degree, of course she is doing something to it.

All I have to say is, for all of that money I paid to ISU, it had better come mounted on a piece of silver brick with my name in Gold lettering.

Knowing ISU, I’m sure that it is printed out on recycled paper with inkjet ink smeared all over it.

All I have to say is when I finally get my diploma, you can bet it is going to become the centerpiece of my apartment.  In fact, I may get started on a tribute statue soon.

I know I’m a day late and a dollar short for doing this, but after looking at my very first entries, I came across an entry where I did an IQ test right after I graduated from High School. And, since I am unable to think of anything to write about that would be remotely entertaining, I bring to you the test results from that first test:

“Your IQ score is 124″

Unfortunately, I guess I was not smart enough to give myself a hint as to where (online) I took the IQ test, so this time around I took two. Mainly because the first one seemed VERY biased towards one particular type of question, and since I knew the “answer” to that question, I believe I got them all right. My IQ test today (click on the picture to take the test):

Again, I felt like I was cheating because of the same-question deal, so I found another free online IQ test to take, and this one did NOT have so many repeated questions. Here is that result (screenshot because they don’t have pretty HTML code like I enjoy):

Click here to take the above IQ test

In conclusion? You don’t need to go to college to keep the same IQ - although, I guess mine went up by a few points after I went to college, according to the test I’m counting as my “real” IQ, however. Maybe if the test were to include a bit more technological questions my IQ would’ve been higher, because the amount of technology things that I learned at college was significant, but just testing by logic questions (ie. the IQ test)?

Imagine me shrugging here.