Crossing the stage: the graduation I didn't think I'd get to

On May 29, 2026 I graduated with a BS in Information Technology from Cebu Institute of Technology - University. I'm writing this the same day, and I still can't quite believe it happened. Part of me kept expecting the date to move.

Behind, but not for the reason people assume

I fell behind my peers somewhere along the way. Not because of the academics - I could do the work. It was my own head during that stretch. My mentality wasn't where it needed to be, and that's what cost me time, not the difficulty of the material.

I want to be honest about that, because the easy version of a graduation post pretends the line from start to finish was straight. Mine wasn't. The gap between me and the people I started with was real, and for a long time it felt like the kind of thing you don't come back from. Crossing the stage today was partly about the degree and mostly about proving to myself that the slow stretch wasn't the end of the story.

Running on zero sleep

I didn't sleep the night before. Not even a little. I was too wound up - excited, overthinking it, half-convinced I'd oversleep and miss the whole thing. The ceremony was at 9am, but we had to be there at 7 to 8 for lineup, so there was no margin to nap it off.

So I went through the morning on pure adrenaline. By the middle of the ceremony the adrenaline ran out and the no-sleep hit me like a wall. There's a specific kind of tired where you're sitting in a packed venue, genuinely happy to be there, and also fighting to keep your eyes open. That was me for a good chunk of it.

The walk

The walk to the stage was exhilarating in a way I didn't expect. There weren't even that many people, objectively, but in the moment it felt like a sea of them, and every one of them was looking that direction. My heart was going the whole way up.

I'm not part of the Latin honors, so I didn't get my name up on the projector - that's a privilege reserved for that group. But my name still got called out loud, and honestly that was enough. Hearing it in the room, knowing what it took to get there, landed harder than any screen would have.

The part I'll actually remember

Before the ceremony I got to hang out with my classmates and friends - the usual chaos of everyone trying to grab photos before lineup. That's the part I think I'll remember longest. Not the speeches, not the heat, not the fight against sleep. Just standing around in our togas taking pictures with people I went through the whole thing with.

It was a good experience. I came in behind, ran on no sleep, didn't have an honor next to my name, and it was still one of the best days I've had. Some things you get to keep regardless of how clean the path to them was.