This time of May always gets me thinking about my college graduation.

This year, as the soon-to-be-parent of a high school graduate, I’ve been thinking about it in a slightly different context.

I used to remember the exact date of my college graduation - I think it might be today, May 19. But there’s a chance it was May 23. This turned out to be my first of two graduations - I also graduated with a masters in elementary education in 2005, and I think that was the other date.

I graduated college in 3 years. Turns out my high school had really good college credit programs that I could apply and senior year of high school essentially served as a freshman year of college for me between the college-level classes I took and the AP classes.

So I graduated in 1999 and a lot of my friends graduated in 2000. (I was enrolled in the Class of 2000 - I didn’t find out I could graduate in three years until well into my freshman year, if not sophomore year.)

I point that out because my graduation was a pivotal time for me. First of all, I had one friend working at BU through the summer, so she joined my family for the graduation celebration that day. But otherwise all my friends dispersed for the summer well before graduation.

The other reason I mention it, though, is the fact that it’s the reason I moved back to Boston the next year - to be with my friends during their senior years. And after unsuccessful stints finding jobs in industries that were not related to my degree, I did eventually land a PA job at the TV station where I interned.

That’s where I met Kathy.

So graduating in three years kind of had a chain reaction effect that has led me to where I am today.

Those are the things I think about as my daughter heads off to college. Who knows what path she’ll end up on.

I do know that the kid pictured at the top there had no plan whatsoever.

(That’s in front of my Beacon Street apartment along the Marathon route that I always write about, incidentally.)

I think a good microcosm of how I handled life back then is graduation morning. I remember being half dressed when my family got to the apartment and I was just cooking my eggs to eat my breakfast. My dad was a little panicked about getting to the graduation (about a mile away) and I was not panicked at all. I was going to eat my breakfast and then walk down to the football field and hadn’t considered elements like parking. (It would be another 4-5 years before I had a car in Boston.)

I’m not sure how we had time to take pictures in front of the apartment - not sure if we came back after graduation or if I threw on some clothes and my cap and gown and we did the pictures real quick before they drove down to the field.

But that was kind of how I lived - not much forethought for big things like that. I’m a lot better at that now, for better or worse.

And my daughters are all way smarter than me already right now than I was at that age and probably for a few years afterwards. So I don’t worry about them - I think they’ll do great.

I guess the moral of this story for any graduates is, if that guy pictured above can do it, you can do it too.