Announcing...

With graduation one month away, I have finally turned my attention towards ordering announcements. When I graduated from high school I think my mother took care of most of the tedious details such as planning the ceremony and ordering invitations. I now have new appreciation for my mother.

Unfortunately, my school does not offer lazy students such as myself pre-made announcements. So I was stuck with the task of actually choosing an announcement and then penning the verse. The ironic thing about this task is that although several of my friends have graduated from law school, I don't remember what their announcements said.

Now writing the verse seems like a fairly simple task, right? Not for Meredith. I'm one of those unfortunate souls who, when presented with many options, is paralyzed by indecision. And to make matters worse, I could find only 3 sample law school grad announcements online. Forget looking for them at the local print shops; they only cater to high school and college. I even had the poor owner of the local Hallmark calling around the country for sample law school grad announcement verses! (I feel REALLY bad that I ended up ordering from another company!)

Finally, after writing what I thought was a mediocre verse, I called in my "wordsmith guru", Mrs. Stewart. With her keen insight on the matter, we were able to create an announcement that was professional, elegant and succinct. We ended up using the Gonzaga Law School verse as our model. In the process of modifying the verse, I made some interesting discoveries about law school degrees. For instance, I learned that many schools still utilize Latin titles in the degrees they confer. While Gonzaga confers a Juris Doctoris, my school uses the word "Doctor" instead. And there are some who believe that "doctorate" should not even be used in reference to a law degree. It is considered bad form to refer to a lawyer as "doctor" even though the lawyer has in fact earned a doctorate. Until the middle of the 20th century, law degrees was referred to as an LL.B, the bachelor of laws. Then schools changed the degree to a juris doctor. I wonder if it had anything to do with the unsolicited LLBean catalogues law students kept receiving (bad joke). Who knew writing a graduation announcement could be so technical!

After the graduation verse was written, it was finally time to choose the paper, font, etc. So last Friday my aunt, mother and I went shopping for the actual announcements. We looked at countless books full of paper samples, envelopes, font colors and styles -- it was overwhelming. After pouring over all the options, I decided that when it comes time for me to marry, I'm eloping.