The Anthony Reeves Experience

Graduation is supposed to feel like a finish line. And in many ways, it is. You walk across the stage. You receive the diploma. You take the pictures. People congratulate you. For a moment, everything feels complete. But what people don’t always talk about is what happens after the applause fades. Because sometimes the hardest question comes after the goal has been accomplished: Now what? When I look back over the different graduations in my life, the one I think about the most is graduate school. Not because it was the biggest accomplishment. Not because it was the most difficult academic experience. But because it was the only time I graduated and had absolutely nothing planned afterward.   When I graduated from high school, I already knew what was next. I was in the Army Reserves, and a couple of weeks after graduation, I was on a plane headed to Fort Leonard Wood for the next phase of my training. When I graduated from undergrad, I had a summer job lined up. After that,...

One of the most profound moments of my college career happened during my sophomore year at the University of Tampa. At the time, I didn’t know it was profound. I didn’t know it was going to reshape how I understood culture, identity, friendship, and the larger world beyond the United States. All I knew was that I was starting over. When I returned to college for my sophomore year in the fall of 1988, I was in a very different place than I had been as a freshman. I had just been hired as a resident assistant, so I was stepping into a new leadership role. But socially, I was also standing at a crossroads. Toward the end of my freshman year, I had started building a meaningful friendship with someone who had become my roommate and eventually my best friend. I also had a friend from my hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, who had attended the University of Tampa with me that first year. But when sophomore year began, neither one of them returned. So I came back to campus alone. Not ph...