just tuned in to the live webcast of this year’s UVA finals’ exercise. the procession hasn’t started yet (i think any moment now, i see the marshals are getting into position on the rotunda steps.) but i like the pre-processional moments where nothing has quite begun yet: watching parents settle into their seats and graduates lining up to make their entrance and the faculty straightening their regalia (and play spot the crimsons and blues!)and later the beginnings of pomp and circumstance (or fair harvard, i watch both schools’.) i don’t even know why i like watching the ceremony so much each year — because you see i have never actually even been to my own graduation ceremonies and i’m sure i wouldn’t have liked it (jim nohrnberg, my advisor, always said your degree should be in your earning of it, not the receiving of it. also, graduation ceremonies are generally very hot and bothersome affairs — i think the best graduation ceremonies are other people’s, where you can just sit and clap and bask in reflected, vicarious pride without draping yourself in silly robes and waiting around for ages.)
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and here they come!
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hm. i think i prefer the sobriety of the phds (lightly suppressed pleasure dancing about their lips, perhaps there is more relief than joy in graduation, and for the years of sacrifice and hardship) than the unruly glee and self-absorption of the undergraduates (too many people carrying balloons this year — very untidy).
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gosh. lots of people taking selfies even as they are marching in. hilarious. and all the faces being made at the camera.
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someone’s lost a balloon! off it goes in the sky!
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i wish i knew my regalia colours better and can identify the correct schools — i think this is education marching in with the light blue hoods
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it’s a little early in the morning for people to be drunk, but apparently some of them are.
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there goes another balloon!
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the faculty procession is under way: i’m trying to spot steve hequembourg (my grad school colleague, and now uva faculty) but i haven’t managed to pick him out yet.
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it suddenly struck me that this is the last time meredith woo is attending graduation as dean of arts and sciences. also, i’d forgotten harry harding is stepping down as founding dean of the batten school….
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ray mabus is a surprisingly good commencement speaker - humorous but not playing up to the audience too much, full of personal anecdotes, flattering the university but not too obviously — one of the better ones we’ve had for years, i think.
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that was a truly moving speech: few of the usual graduation platitudes, and wholly exhortatory to service with the metaphor of planting trees. a quite chinese sentiment, in fact, come to think of it.
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“i have worn the honour of honours: i graduated from virginia” — i wondered how long it would take for someone to say that! bingo!
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“with all the rights and privileges thereunto belonging”: i just remembered i haven’t returned my ballot for the harvard board of overseers this year and should.
terri sullivan to the engineers: i urge you to work at the frontiers of applied knowledge and to confer to the next generation the excitement of science.
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sometimes the language of graduation makes me reflect if we understand what it means to be “an educated citizen in a free nation” or to be welcomed to “the fellowship of educated men and women.”
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“madame president, i present to you these [significant pause] NOISY candidates”
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dean zeithmal getting a massive cheer from the mcintyre school. he’s here in singapore next week i believe, there’s a uva reception i should go to.
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meredith woo at last: but a little shocked: she seems haggard, and her speech faltering. this year — and her personal sorrows — must have taken a greater toll on her than we expected. i’m so sorry.
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no matter how many times i hear a university president say it, i get a tingle down my spine when doctoral candidates are welcomed �to the ancient and universal company of scholars”. if i watch anymore of this i’m going to have to leave law school and go back to literature.
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president sullivan: “the class of 2014 will also be special to me, because we were first years together” aww.
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and it is ended. the good ol’ song is being sung.
congratulations 2014 hoos!!!
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird