Done is good

Bryn Mawr has a saying, “Done is good.” It’s our version of “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Sometimes you just have to stop and say, “It’s done, and I am good with that.” Even if you could do more. Even if you can’t do more. It’s time to hand that thesis in, to take that final, to call it a day. Or a career. Done is good. Even if I could keep going. Even if I could not.

Commencement is always bittersweet, with an admixture of relief. The walk back across campus at the end of the day always feels like a moment of transition, leaving behind the chaos of Garden Party (which is exactly what it sounds like, a party in a garden with circles of chairs and tea sandwiches and cookies and ice cold lemonade — for more than a thousand people) for the serene and contemplative scholarly space that is summer. Past the empty tent, down through the arched oaks. 

The wispy ghosts of past commencements drift past. Most of the students I have taught I will never see again. We have spent hundreds of hours together, I can recognize many of their footsteps in the hall before they tap on my door. Gone, but also still with me. Faint outlines of two late colleagues lounge on the Moon Bench, looking back at me, whispering "Done is good!" 

This walk was particularly poignant, though it may not be my last. I can always choose to go to commencement, and for the next few years, when students I have taught will graduate, I may indeed go. But I will be a ghost of sorts, drifting in and out.

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Bryn Mawr gives its emerti faculty a medal to commemorate the event. You wear it to commencement.