To our friends, on your graduation.

Dear friends back home,

We're so proud of you. Congratulations on what you've achieved. It's kind of a big deal.

It's no lie that our hearts have certainly been with you on this very special weekend where you took that walk across the stage, ate many sweet treats at the garden party, danced the night away at the ball but mostly got a taste of the life we shared together at Rhodes. We are so sorry to have missed it.

Although we've already had one graduation, I think it's very true to say that once you have been included into a little family that you built up over the years of university, it's very difficult to forget those memories and the days you shared. You start to think about the wonderful days that you once lived in a student land where you didn't think about what you would be doing when they came to an end.
Let's agree to be outright honest and say that what we learnt (or didn't learn) in those lecture theaters throughout the years had little to do with the content of what the lecturer was saying and everything to do with who you were sitting next to and who you would be seeing for a drink later.

Your university years are made up of your friends. Of you, our friends.

While the piece of paper is awesome to have and we should always be grateful for being able to attain it, its really the experience-the laughs, the late nights and early mornings, the dawnies, the mares, the Friars jugs, Rat pizza, BP runs, Mama Pams, The Kaif but most importantly...the essence which all of us lived by at Rhodes.  Graduation allows us to reminisce about those silly days and it allows us to look back and see how the people who have entered our lives, have a big hand in who we are today.

Did we ever think that after we graduated, we would be living in Moscow celebrating our next graduation in a Mexican restaurant with other Rhodents and Russian friends?
It goes to show just what a sense of humour life sometimes has.

We wish only the greatest things for you because you have given us many of the greatest things we could have ever asked for.
We are so proud of you, we love you and we miss you so very much! Happy Graduation.