My, Lisa, went through her commencement proceedings this weekend (she doesn’t actually get her degree until August, but here we have a combined Spring/Summer commencement ceremony). She’s finishing up the final touches on her thesis for her Masters in Medieval Studies.
Her sister and brother-in-law from Tennessee surprised her (and me) by driving up for the ceremony after stringing her along making her think they wouldn’t be able to make it. Since they’re the two sanest people in either of our families, that was fun.
The only low point was when the idiot they hired to do a prayer during the commencent had the temerity to compare the WorldCom and Enron fiascos with Sept. 11. Apparently if you don’t pray for Arthur Andersen, then the terrorists have won.
When I received my degree I never bothered with going through a graduation ceremony and was reminded why sitting there on Saturday — there is nothing more boring than watching thousands of people you don’t know get a degree. My daughter was thrilled when the Dean of Arts and Sciences talked about my wife in a mini-speech highlighting students who had made a lot of impact on the university (thrilled because the dean mentioned my daughter). But by the time they got around to awarding the undergraduate degrees, she was bouncing all over the place out of sheer boredom (and I was about to join her).