Full Regalia

$63.61.

That's how much it costs to rent your cap and gown for graduation. When I bought my undergraduate cap and gown, it cost $16. Even.

I can't decide which mystery is keeping me awake at night more effectively: why it's so expensive to effing RENT the regalia, or where the 61 cents came from. Why not $63? Why not $64? And why can't I keep my hood? I don't particularly want the gown itself. (Although it could make a splendid Halloween costume: I'm thinking old British judge or something.) But dammit, I want my hood.

It's also a glorious mish mosh of colors: Blue and darker blue and gold and purple. I must admit though, that I'm looking forward to wearing a color other than black or red. When I looked at law schools, I rejected out of hand any schools that had red and black as their school colors. I just couldn't face YET ANOTHER phase of my education dominated by those colors.

So, $63.61. It might have been nice had we been given more than two days notice of the fact that we were going to have to be measured and pony up the bucks during a specific four hour time span on one given day, but I guess that was just too hard to coordinate or something. And of course, when I say "be measured", I mean a representative of SBA handed you a paper tape measure to wrap around your own head to get the proper cap size. Alternatively, there was a communal pile of caps you could try on until you found the one that fit the best. So, now that I think about it, I'm not certain why the measurements had to be taken during that specific time period. It's not like they had representatives from Herff Jones measuring us for a tailor fit or something. I guess there's something I just don't understand about the whole process. Just like I don't understand why it costs $63.61 to rent a cap, a gown, a hood, and a tassel for a few hours.