Graduations

[jethrien]

I went to my sister-in-law's graduation from her master's program yesterday. Very nice. Or rather, her accomplishment is quite impressive, and her graduation ceremony was only boring as opposed to mind-numbingly boring. Not a fan of graduations - on one hand, after that much work, you want some kind of marker. On the other, they're usually incredibly dull. (I was a much bigger fan of the waffle breakfast that followed, and the showering with gifts and obligatory questions regarding life plans. It had a lot more to do with her and less to do with politicians making self-serving speeches, and she was the only person in that crowd I was actually interested in.)

Because it was a university in New York, Chuck Schumer showed up. Despite not being on the program. He gave a slight variation on the speech my professor mother-in-law has heard him deliver at dozens of graduations before. We speculated that he may have gotten confused and thought this was the law school graduation, and used the wrong speech variation. I find myself hoping Chuckro goes to Rutgers, just because that's the only one on his list that would be unlikely to result in my sitting through yet another Schumer speech in a few years' time. I particularly liked the part where our entire family turned to each other and mouthed along with him "even my mother didn't vote for me!"

The honorary degree guy gave a fairly boring speech as well. However, I liked his for one reason - unlike all the others, he addressed not only the graduates' parents, but their spouses. It was pretty much the only acknowledgement in the entire ceremony that I saw that masters and PhD students are not the same as undergrads - that these folk were not kids, were not necessarily going out into the real world for the first time ever. Sure, some of them went straight into grad school after college. But my sister-in-law has also been holding down a job at the same time, feeding herself, and being a lot more independent and adult that most people expect from a college kid. 'Cause she's not a college kid, she's an adult in a masters program. And a bunch of the people walking with her had grey hair and/or children. Again, because these weren't college kids, they were adults. I felt like most of the speakers were talking down to them, and it really irritated me. And while there's no doubt that their parents are proud of them (as they should be), it's not the same relationship as the parents of a newly minted college graduate. Feh.

But she's safely out, with a ridiculously high GPA to boot, so go her. She kicked ass and took names in grad school. Which is the important part. And there were waffles, and then she and her mom and I were kicking the butts of the boys in the family at Trivial Pursuit until half of us fell asleep by accident in the middle of the game. Apparently there was a bit too much excitement for the lot of us.

Yay hutubachick!

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The graduation in Iowa was interminable, but that's what happens with 1500 people (in just the liberal arts undergrad portion) graduate. We stayed through the whole thing, even though some of the graduates left. That was really rude. The last girl to shake the Dean's hand on her way up got a huge round of applause. It was cute.

Graduations are a pain, but if you're there with close friends/family and prepared (I had a book for the name-calling portion), it's not so bad. Congrats to the s-i-l.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

I read about the history of the school, what all the banners stood for (and discovered they'd hung the banners in the wrong order), the lyrics of the alma mater (and discovered they'd either sung or printed the wrong verse), and the life histories of all the speakers, including the ones for the events we weren't at (law school, etc.)

My mother-in-law brought the paper. But we were sitting in VIP seating (because everyone in the school administration knows and loves my SIL, because she's awesome like that), and it just felt disrespectful. So all I had to read was the program...

[(Anonymous)]

By my calculation, I have been to at least 45 graduations (my 3, 35 as a teacher, Chuck's 2, Sammi's 3, Liz's 2, etc.) As a result, I ALWAYS bring reading material. In all those years, only a handful of speakers have said anything worth listening to (Mario Cuomo because his voice is so gorgeous; Hillary Clinton because she impresses me in general; the star of "Lost" whose name I don't know but he's so damned cute; and Henry Viscardi, because he is likely the most admirable public figure I have ever met.) The rest? I read the newspaper or a small but engrossing novel.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

And of course Chuckro's going to have another one eventually.

Maybe I'll have to get another degree just to get back at everyone else for making me sit through theirs.

[(Anonymous)]

Darling D-I-L,

I don't read through a graduation involving one of my own! If you do get another degree, I promise to pay attention!

[hutubachick.livejournal.com]

Thanks Rebecca! :) That's a lovely entry :)