Pomp and Circumstance

For those of you who don't know, that is the song they play when you walk out onto the field. There's a youtube video at the end if you really don't know what I'm talking about.

Graduation is actually kind of funny. It's not really to recognize the hard work students have done over the past 4 years. It's really for the families and the faculty.

For the family, it's a time for pictures and an indication that their loved one has finished another aspect of his/her life. It's also another reason to get everyone together. If gives them a reason to cheer and shout. Same thing applies to friends who go to graduation and are not graduating. Of course, they also like an excuse to party and drink a lot.

For the faculty, it's a way of showing off his or her achievements. They do this by having 18 million cords or sashes/stoles. They also have speeches that last way too long and usually not interesting. Particularly if you are the president of the school [who is next to never seen anyway] or being honored for some sort of achievement you've acquired [which should really be it's own ceremony].

The only part that I would say is really for the graduates is the commencement speaker. This is someone who wasn't a faculty or professor at the school you are graduating from. Ours happened to be an alumni and he was actually pretty interesting. He did his bachelor's degree here and is now a professor at a prestigious school. When he was younger, he lost his legs in a accident. Now he has prosthetic legs that he designed himself.  He told us this amusing story of how when he first started here, he would his adjust his legs so he would be a inch taller each day, just to see who would notice. And while some parts of his speech seemed canned, they rest actually felt original. It was kind of refreshing compared to high school.

Again, outside of that... The ceremony isn't for the students. Who would want to sit out on a field, posing in 8 different ways for some pictures you won't buy and sitting in the blazing sun for 2.5 hours just to get a thing that holds your diploma [because the actual diploma doesn't come for another month]. Oh and spending $50 on a cap, gown, tassel and hood? Yeah, no one really wants that. Unless you're crazy... Or a family member... Or a friend... Or a faculty member.

Congratulation graduates!