The Graduation Post: Director's Cut
Special behind the scenes content on my graduation post
Did anyone else love watching the behind-the-scenes footage on DVDs back in the day? In this case now, behind the scenes on YouTube, Instagram, etc?
Anyways, this is my version of that.
One of the biggest motivators for me creating this Substack was the amount of content I’d have to cut from my LinkedIn posts in order to hit that sweet, short 3,000-character limit.
I actually thought I would have finished writing and posting it last week, but I wanted to give myself a bit of breathing room since we are in PEAK graduation post season. Pair that with the silly amount of expectations I put on myself and my editorial process and of course I spent an embarrassing amount of time on it.
So here’s the director’s cut. The deleted scenes. The stuff that almost made it and the stuff that got yeeted into the void because I was very much at the character limit.
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THE DARTMOUTH BIT
At some point I had this whole clever thing planned where I’d contrast Dartmouth’s motto of “Vox Clamantis in Deserto,” which translates to “a voice crying in the wilderness” with CMU’s “my heart is in the work.” The bit was going to be something like: Dartmouth’s motto gives off being in the wilderness trying to find my identity whereas CMU’s was learning how to pour every ounce of energy into it now that I knew who I was.
I was very proud of this at first until I tried translating it into easily understood sentences for someone who wasn’t a part of Camp Dartmouth and couldn’t really make it land in a way that wasn’t confusing. Maybe it still doesn’t make much sense here but the point was that CMU gave me a lot of an easier motto to work with than Dartmouth. Into the void it went.
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THE GRADES RANT
There was going to be a whole mini rant about how grades in my field are kind of made up and I stopped caring about them in undergrad and blah blah blah.
This got cut for two reasons. One: it reads as arrogant even when you don’t mean it to. Two: I graduated with honors so it really reads as arrogant. The better story was why the honors happened all while I was too busy actually doing things I cared about to stress about the grade. That’s a different point entirely and a much less annoying one.
There’s a part of me that kind of loves seeing the chaos of discussions around grade inflation and AI in higher education so the grades rant is still in my drafts somewhere and will likely become its own thing. We’ll see.
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PLAGIARIZING SOMEONE’S QUOTE BY ACCIDENT
My mom has always said something along the lines of “they can take a lot from you, but they can never take your education”, especially post-divorce. It’s a beautiful sentiment and very her and I wanted to put it in the post.
The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.
- B. B. King
When I asked Claude, apparently, this is loosely attributed to B.B. King, but every Reddit post seems to attribute it to some older relative having the same sentiment and passing it down. I could have asked her, and looking at this, I think at some point I meant to, but it’s kind of funny just leaving it as a mystery. Maybe it’s something that the older generation just likes to quote without really knowing who it’s from.
Speaking of my mom….
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MY MOM’S PHOTOS OF JENSEN HUANG
At one point there was a line about how my mom’s photos from the full campus ceremony, taken in the pouring rain, were mostly of Jensen Huang because she couldn’t find me in the crowd. Obviously, rain or shine, my family was out there for Jensen. #Nvidiastonks
It’s a funny anecdote to me and anyone who sees her Facebook post will see the two photos and video of him and one of me (and one of me and him together that she made with ChatGPT) Sadly, I had to cut it since I wanted to make more room for thanking people in my LinkedIn post, but the Jensen Huang fancam from her cracks me up.
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THE JENSEN HUANG QUOTE THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN
I also meant to look back at the commencement VOD for a quote since anchoring my writing to one of those helps me get at the central theme. Naturally I thought, great, I’ll open with a Jensen Huang quote.
No shade to him, but the speech was pretty mid and I wouldn’t be surprised if it had to take multiple PR pass throughs to get okay’d though I do love the flex on how he met his wife.
There’s been this new thing happening at commencements where some out of touch exec talks about AI and the crowd boos. This happened a bit with Jensen too and yeah, I did not want to be that person. I yap about AI enough already.
So I went with Carnegie Mellon’s motto instead, which has been around since 1900 and has never gotten anyone booed. Safe choice. I stand by it.
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LINKEDIN ANGST
At one point the LinkedIn section read: “The fear of being cringe and perceived is real, but it’s funny how much easier it is to write when you’ve got nothing left to lose.”
It got cut because I’ve written about LinkedIn angst so many times that even I was like, okay Sara we get it. If you want the full unhinged version of that conversation, I already wrote it here.
I’m honestly pretty proud of that post and even showed it to a LinkedIn employee at Grace Hopper and it’s something that comes up allllll the time when someone asks me how to get hired in 2026 (post post post, make your existence known or you’re just another resume in the void)
I also tried to frame my LinkedIn as a mini-capstone but that became too much and I went with living archive instead. Hopefully that still got the point across and I am pretty proud that I was able to develop a semi-consistent posting schedule and actually hit post on things.
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VIDEO EDITING OR HOW GROUP PROJECTS DIDN’T SUCK
This part wasn’t even going to be in the LinkedIn post but it didn’t really have enough to stand alone as its own segment so I’m throwing this here.
I was the one editing the videos for our group projects. This was a role that I took on voluntarily and obsessively, mainly because it was something I had done for many classes in the past and something I scrutinized heavily over whenever someone else did it.
It also gave me the benefit of unlimited retakes. If there’s anything I know about listening to my own voice, it’s that I have so many “ums,” and more embarrassingly, gasp for air in between my words. Naturally, I wanted to spare someone else the lengthy duty of removing them, or worse, just leaving them in untouched.
I got used to my classmates’ different mannerisms, such as figuring out the maximum speed rate I could put them at while preserving the pitch. I got so deep into it that I can now recognize the exact sound wave pattern of my friend saying “um” because I cut it out so many times.
Side note: per my friend’s suggestion now that I’m free, I’m finally going to build an AI model to automate that audio trimming. I probably should have done that sooner but I also would start editing right before the deadline and trying out new software right before the due date felt too risky.
At the same time, I didn’t really mind these video editing duties. I had a group member who was absolutely goated at picking the perfect slide template and formatting the information, I had another classmate who tried harder than I think he’d admit at making sure the material was perfect, and me tying it all together and sending off the final cut! Even when both of them would send me audio files that were five minutes each for a 10-minute video, and I still hadn’t recorded my part, we found a way to make it work.
Maybe group projects don’t have to be doomed and one-sided after all.
Okay! That’s the director’s cut. Hope you enjoyed the chaos.
Here’s a treat for all of you that made it to the end.
