You've been waiting almost nineteen years for this day to arrive and it still hasn't hit you yet. You're graduating. You're graduating despite the fact that the majority of your classmates and teachers told you that you wouldn't.

Or couldn't.

Sure, your diploma is long overdue, and the gown you'd been fitted for at the beginning of your first senior year is now too short for your gangly legs, but why let anything so silly ruin your special day? You're standing outside of the auditorium with your red robe and your mortarboard and you're graduating.

You picture what it must've been like this time last year for your girlfriend, who is currently brushing non-existent lint off your robe because she's way more nervous than you are for some reason. Maybe she thinks they'll skip over Pierce and go straight to Piermann and you won't get to graduate.

Crap, now that's all you can think about.

Think of something else, Stupid, your brain screams, even though it's not okay that you just called yourself that.

But the word won't get out of your head.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

If only you had spent your first senior year studying instead of trailing your hand up Santana's skirt every damn day like clockwork––

"Hey," Santana says, causing you to lose your train of thought. "It's almost time."

You're not-so-secretly glad she interrupted you because you were just on the verge of ruining it for yourself.

You take her hand in yours and lead her into the auditorium. She takes her seat in the front row while you make your way backstage to join the rest of your class.

Blaine's senior president speech––the speech you would have given last year––is… boring as hell, to put it nicely. All of the speeches are. You didn't come here for cheesy life metaphors and country music quotes that make all of the moms in the audience dab at their eyes. You have no choice but to sit through them, however, so you wait.

And you wait.

And you wait some more.

Graduation last year didn't seem this long, but you guess it's different when it's your own.

They're finally at the P's when you start to get antsy.

Pace.

Packer.

Page.

You have no clue who these people are. By the time Figgins gets to Peterson, you're squirming. The girl behind you looks at you like you're nuts. You do a few breathing exercises Quinn taught you when she was pregnant. That only earns you more looks.

Finally, you hear it.

Brittany Susan Pierce.

You make your way onto the stage and shake the principal's hand with your left one and take hold of your diploma with your right, even though you think it was supposed to be the other way around.

You stare out into the audience at the only person you want to see and blow her a kiss.

Suddenly it doesn't matter what happened in the past.

All that matters is that you and Santana are leaving this godforsaken town.

Considering most of your peers will never leave Lima, you think that makes you pretty smart.