Published in On Our Selection News October 31, 2013

Celebration is the spice of life.

I hit a massive milestone on Friday night, handing in what I hope was my last piece of assessment ever (don’t worry, I knocked on wood). After four years of being mildly stressed, all my spare time spent contributing to my uni degrees had come to an end.

All that was left to do was to hit “submit”.

With one click of a button, the last of my uni-related worries would be gone forever. This sounds good, but the truth is I was concerned that there was a gross lack of ceremony involved.

A few weeks back, I carried on like a proud mum when I followed my roommate and a friend from college as they handed in their theses. I took dozens of photos, and got a little teary when they handed over those wildly significant bound pages.

As convenient as online assignment submission is, it certainly lacks that excitement that sticking things in a slot can hold. Why, you could be sitting at the computer in a dirty old t-shirt and your undies, with greasy hair and Celine Dion’s greatest heartbreaking hits blasting in the background while you submit the culmination of four years of missing current TV shows (I JUST finished the first season of Game of Thrones, and am still a little sad. The third season will kill me) and having no money. Where’s the fun in that?

By about 6pm on Friday evening, I was panicking. I had no celebratory plans, yet the submission date loomed. I asked friends for their advice, and while one suggestion to “bake and eat an entire cake,” sounded delicious, it just made me think that I was going to be sobbing into the icing before dying and being discovered weeks later half eaten by my dog.

I’ve always held the belief that all things should be celebrated. I treat myself to magazine time when I’ve finished a weekend workout, I go to ridiculous lengths to mark the birthdays of friends and family and I celebrate the completion of each paper by drawing a massive smiley face on the “pages to do” list (after a particularly trying week, I’ve been known indulge in a shrill “wooo” that rings in the ears of my colleagues).

This also works in reverse. “You didn’t get that job? Well let’s celebrate that by watching trashy TV marathons and eating until we feel uncomfortable. Quick! Go put on your loose pants!” Even the bad things must be acknowledged, and “celebrated” in some way. So of course a milestone as big as no longer having to think during my spare time, no more referencing and no more group assignments had to be celebrated, and it had to go off with a bang.

So I did the best with the resources I had. I forced my Mum, Dad and little sister to pull the five party poppers I found in the cupboard as I hit send. I popped some champagne that I won from work and put on a big sombrero that had been in the back of my car since a friend left it there two years ago. And while it took Mum two goes to get the hang of party poppers and I ended up finishing the bottle, crying though a Rosie O’Donnell movie on my own, it sure was better than nothing.