EMMA PHILBROOK: STUDENT LIFE

Waitsburg High School gets its graduation caps, gowns, and stoles (flat silky scarf things) through a company called Herff-Jones. The seniors buy their graduation gear this time of year and receive it sometime in the spring.

It costs $41 to rent the gown and purchase the cap and stole (the cap being a potential stomping ground for head lice and the stole, due to the fact that it's imprinted with a school and a date, being highly un-reusable). That's all we're required to purchase. (Technically, we don't have to purchase any of it - unless we want to "walk" at graduation, that is.)

But most of us seniors will be handing the Herff-Jones rep checks for somewhat higher amounts. A lot of us want the official invitations that Herff-Jones prints for WHS. Our class got together and designed them as juniors. They're gorgeous - red foil on creamy-white cardstock, with a stately gray rendering of our school serving as a background to frilly black script announcing the time, the date, and a few lines of retrospective sentimentality. They come in nice envelopes and have little slots where a graduate can insert a small cardstock slip printed with their name.

Because Herff-Jones also purveys these small cardstock slips, most of those ordering invitations will also be shelling out about $20 for a box of these "Graduate Name cards," $27 if we want the "Premium" option with a border.

When the catalogue came in, most of us immediately began ooh-ing and aah-ing at all the cool graduation-related stuff they had for sale. Custom announcements! Memento scrapbooks! Replica tassels to dangle from our car mirrors! Jewelry! Key chains! Funny T-shirts!

Thankfully for our parents' bank accounts, the catalogues were handed out in class, so we had a teacher there to remind us that most of this stuff would end up in a box in the attic within a year anyway.

She also pointed out that much of the handy-sounding stuff was almost patently useless. A case in point: Protective tissue inserts for inside the invitations. ("Add an extra touch of formality and protect the raised print of your announcement text!")

There was also a smaller catalogue full of class ring designs. The class spent a full fifteen minutes ogling all those sparkly options. Herff-Jones sells rings in seven styles, with 23 available gemstones, four faceting options, and the choice to have anything from the Armenian flag to a paintball gun engraved on the side.

When we stumbled on the prices, which started at $199 for a small ring set with a simulated birthstone and made of "non-precious fine jeweler's alloy," there were several people sobbing. (Oh, fine, so maybe there was only one person sobbing. And maybe she writes a column for the local paper. And maybe she was strongly tempted to take the $9.50 she saved from not buying the protective tissue inserts and instead purchase a jug of Hawaiian punch to drown her sorrows in. But I digress.)

So as much as I would like personalized thank-you notes and an engraved metal replica of my diploma, my mother informs me that I'll be sticking to the cap, gown, stole, invitations, and name cards.

And maybe a scrapbook. Or album. Or a "Friends and Family" photo collagehellip;