Graduation Gifts

Graduation presents have a difficult job: they mark an ending while pointing at something nobody can describe yet.

Nine words for it. CAMPUS and CLASSES look backwards at the thing being finished. BEGIN and BEGINS look the other way. TOMORROW is where the plan lives. DREAM and DREAMS are the plural version, which is the honest one — people rarely have just the one. JOURNEY is the part between leaving and arriving, which turns out to be most of it. SUCCESS is the bold choice.

Each comes as a t-shirt, hoodie, mug and sticker — for the dorm room, the first desk, or the box of things that moves house four times and never gets unpacked.