I walked into Rec Hall alone about ten minutes before two Saturday afternoon to see the commencement ceremony.

I had awakened in the morning not quite realizing that it was Commencement Day, but heard about it later from several people who were planning to go -- none of whom actually attended.

I wanted to go because in May I will, God and the University computers willing, be sitting on the floor of Rec Hall as a graduate. When I found out I would be going to Rec Hall alone, I still decided to see what I soon will face.

I sat in a nearly empty section of seats above the College of Engineering graduates. From there, all of the students looked alike. Suzie McConnell, who had played basketball in Seoul and been on the evening news at home during break, looked no more significant than those students who face uncertainty in their future.

As I waited for the ceremony to begin, I looked for my friends among the small figures in black below, but could see no faces clearly and recognized no one.

As Dallas Mayor Annette Strauss, the opening speaker, began her appeal to the future movers and shakers, my mind wandered to one Collegian alum I met in 1987 at the paper's 100th anniversary celebration who occasionally comes to mind at times such as Saturday's pomp-filled circumstance.

I had admittedly come into the office that anniversary night, as many of my colleagues had, to hobnob with the successful alumni who had gone on to positions with the Associated Press, The New York Times, Sports Illustrated and a variety of other publications. Instead I wound up typesetting a commemorative advertisement about the event for the next day's paper.

I was working for much of the evening in the production shop as the alums filed past in guided tours led by the Collegian's general manager, Gerry Lynn Hamilton.

Throughout the evening, the groups of alums passed through the production shop, reveling in memories of pleasant times past. One group even had fond reminiscences of a threatened libel suit from their Collegian careers more than a decade earlier.

In one group, I noticed a man standing back from the crowd, watching people tentatively as they passed through. He was nondescript in appearance, dressed in blue jacket and jeans, but today I remember him more clearly than I recall those alums I had hoped to meet that night.

He seemed lost for a moment so I stopped what I was doing (the ad was already 24 hours late) and said hello, asking him about his past Collegian career and his current occupation.

He had been a sports writer at the Collegian and continued that profession at a newspaper in New Jersey. Few of his class had returned for the reunion and those present did not seem to remember him.

As I trod back and forth throughout the evening between the production room and the two newsrooms running errands, I saw him several times, each time standing apart from the group.

Since that time, I have wondered about how I will be received at reunions in the future. Should I become what those people I had hoped to meet have become since their Collegian days, I am certain I will be greeted with open arms, both by the people with whom I spent my four years here and by the new class of The Daily Collegian.

But what will that greeting be like if I spend my life toiling away at some small newspaper in the hinterlands?

In the weeks before the commencement ceremony, many of the graduates I know apparently were asking themselves the same question. One punctuated every sentence with a "Boy, will I miss this place!" and an expression of his desire to stay.

I wanted to express these thoughts to my friends who graduated Saturday, but the desire got lost in the crowd outside Rec Hall.

My wish for them, and for all Penn State graduates from all eras, is that they may all be greeted warmly on their return, no matter how glorious or obscure their future lives might be.