Graduation Photos

I have a selection of photos from Em's graduation to post. These were all taken by Frances during or after the graduation, so all the credit is hers.

Here we have the story of the graduation, in pictures:
Here we have two of the audience eagerly waiting for the ceremony to start. We found a good set of seats up in the bleachers and settled in and started reading the program. In this picture, Jonathan is smiling like crazy at the camera, because Frances is taking the picture (presumably? or maybe he's just always smiley!), and Mom is reading the program, probably looking for Em's name. The program was actually pretty interesting, I especially liked the section where it gives the names of all the doctoral thesises (thesii? theseses?), because it contained all of them, hard science ones and movie/theater ones, and so on.
Here we have L and myself before the ceremony started. I think L is playing Animal Crossing, and I'm reading the program as mentioned before. The waiting for the ceremony went on for a while, and then finally it began! Everyone stood up and there was in general a whole lot of noise. The entire row of us waited in anticipation as the graduates filed into the stadium, until this happened:
Emily appears! We were looking in the right spot and though it took a while, she shows up, walking in with Zev in front of her, and Margaret behind. Except in this picture, it's not really apparent that they're in that particular order, but it will soon be clear! Notice also that Emily has immediately spotted us in the stands, and is smiling like crazy, which is good cause we were smiling like crazy too and waving our arms, and hats, and there was even some jumping up and down. Emily, having spotted us, immediately decides to show her friends where we are sitting:
I'm told that this was pretty unsuccessful, even though we were wearing some memorable hats and waving and stuff, there were probably a lot of other people in the stands wearing memorable hats and waving and so on.
And now they have arrived at their seats! This is about ten or fifteen minutes into the ceremonial procession, and so they got to face the audience for a while, because no-one was up on the stage yet and so it would be pretty boring to face the opposite way. It took another fifteen minutes for the rest of the people to arrive in the stadium, during which time several of us got tired of standing up and sat down. Others of us went looking for other things to take pictures of. Like this one:
That is one huge ring! I'm not sure whose hand+ring+cell phone this is, but it's a great picture. Also during this time, we noticed that on one building adjacent to the field (I think it was the sports trainer's complex, or locker room building, or something like that), the following was going on:
Setting up for dinner! These waiters were bringing tables out, setting up tablecloths and stopping every once in a while to check out the commotion on the field adjacent to them. "What's this, a graduation going on? I hope they're done by the time our dinner guests are here."

Meanwhile, everyone is still entering the stadium, and it has become a lot harder to actually spot Emily in the crowd, even though we know where she is standing. Luckily, Frances is really good at this:
Yep, there she is! It really looks like Zev and Margaret have just vanished, though.

I now arrive at the point in the story where a very important point must be made. Remember when I said that we were all standing up and cheering as Emily entered the stadium? And then after a while, some of us got tired and sat down? Well, even as it rolled along to minute 30 of the processional entering the stadium, this one was still cheering:
Yep. The whole 30 minutes. I'm really surprised Mom still had a voice after that was done. :)


Next we have the really important part: people gave speeches, the speaker talked, groups of students stood up as the head honcho read out the degrees they were awarded. All this, however, really doesn't lend itself to my telling the story in pictures though, and so I will refer you back to my previous post about the graduation speaker if you want to get a better idea for this part. Frances did take pictures here, so ask her for them if you're really dying to see some pictures of the speaker, and so on.

The next part, however, is VERY important, because it is at the end of the ceremony, and Emily is so very happy that it is now bubble time!
During the ceremony, it looked like a bunch of people in the school of communication had bubble stuff, because there were huge amounts of soap bubbles floating up above them. It was only at this point, when people were departing, that we find out that Em is one of the ones blowing bubbles!
I especially like this picture, as it appears that Zev is blowing imaginary bubbles, and the guy in the same row on the far right is looking really jealously at the bubble blowing fun.
Finally, the whole thing is over and we spent a while trying to find everyone in the crowd. Luckily, we do, and there are two more great pictures:
Mom and Dad and Emily!

The kids! No, I'm not sure why we are balancing the tall people on the left side and the short ones on the right. Maybe we were trying to balance the hats, one on the far left, and one on the far right? Anyways, there you have it, a picture-version of Emily's graduation.

Graduation Day

Today was graduation day for Northwestern University, in which my sister Emily would be graduating from the School of Communication. L and I flew out early in the morning to be able to make it in time, and for once there were no travel issues.

The graduation was held in Northwestern's football stadium, which was pretty impressive. I want to compare it to the one at Gainesville, but we only saw the outside of that one so it's hard to guess the size differential. In any case, we walked in through the gates and presented our tickets, which got barely a glance, received a program, and the first thing that greeted us was a concessions stand, with popcorn, hot dogs, pretzels, and drinks (sodas). Wow. I was pretty tempted, just to say I had a pretzel at Em's graduation, but we'd just eaten lunch beforehand so I wasn't that hungry. We found pretty good seats - the ceremony was held at 6pm, which meant that the sun wasn't at the peak, and the seating was set up such that the ceremony (held in the center of the field) was facing the west set of seats which were nicely in the shade. At first it looked like some of the graduating class were going to have to sit in the sun, but by the time everyone arrived it was all in the shade.

So, people arriving... first, let me mention those present in the stands: Jonathan, Frances, Mom, Dad, Lorian and myself. Frances had her nice camera with and was taking pictures for a lot of this, I will try and get some of those to post here. The processional march into the stadium was a really impressive display of coordination. The graduates came in from both the north and south sides, in three different streams from each side, ending up (somehow) in the correct section of seats for each school. I later figured out the trick, there were colored strips marked on the ground for the path of each stream of students, which they mostly stuck with. The actual processional took nearly thirty-five minutes for everyone to arrive. The slowest group was the faculty, followed closely by the fifty-year anniversary alumni, but it was only a little while in before it stopped being boring, as that's when we saw Emily arrive. We'd been clued in to where she'd be sitting, so it was easy to tell which stream of people she'd have to be in, and once spotted we got to do the whole "pointing her out to the people that hadn't seen her" yet routine. This was compounded by Emily trying to point us out to her friends who were walking next to her - Zev and Margaret (I think, I'm not very good with names). Zev apparently couldn't spot us at all, which was funny to both sides based on the facial expressions and the relative ease at which the rest had spotted each other. I should mention that mom at this point was extremely happy and kept waving to Emily happily during the entire rest of the processional. Eventually several of us got tired and sat down. The ceremony was interesting, it started with a prayer. However, it wasn't a particular religion's prayer, but rather a very odd attempt at being acceptable to everyone regardless of religion. Except in the sense that it completely left out any polytheistic religions, and atheists, etc, etc. It was also a case of speaking a whole lot, but not actually saying much, in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate prayers for their meaning and intent, even though I'm not particularly religious, the emotion and meaning behind a lot of prayers I really like/agree with. In any case, this one sorta fell flat for me. There was another at the end which I actually liked a lot - the benediction was given by a Jewish rabbi and was good to hear, didn't make any apology for what religion it came from and still had a good message and presentation.

Anyways, now we get to the commencement speaker, skipping over the honorary degrees section. The commencement speaker was Julia Louis-Dreyfus, an actress whom I wasn't familiar with, but apparently played a character on "Seinfeld" as well as many other things. She was also an undergraduate at Northwestern, who did not graduate! This was an excellent combination for a commencement speaker: she not only knew the undergraduate population, she knew all sorts of great in-jokes for that crowd and made it accessible to everyone in the audience. She was witty, funny and serious at all the right points, and it was an excellent commencement speech. The interesting thing is if I compare it to Caltech's, the main points had a lot of similarity: they were really concerned about the environment and where we will be in the future, but her presentation was upbeat and encouraging, pointing out the little things one can do to try and make a dent, and the patterns and behaviors that can change to make progress. In summary, the speech was excellent and kept attention very well, and who can dislike a speech where one of the big pieces of advice given to the students was "Don't be an ass!"

After that it was pretty much time for degrees and walking out and stuff, they don't call all the names for the graduation, which is probably a good thing considering how many people there were and that it took two hours even without that. I did notice that there weren't really any of the annoying air-horns that invaded Caltech's ceremony, which was nice. Also, as a random footnote, Jonathan did get a hot dog in the middle of the ceremony and it looked excellent. I think graduation ceremonies with concessions stands are an excellent idea, I'm sad now that I didn't get a pretzel.

Graduation

I went to Caltech's graduation today. On the whole it was pretty much a graduation. I liked the inaugeration ceremony for the new president, though I had trouble actually understanding what he was saying. He seemed to have a good rapport with the crowd and was fun to listen to even without understanding what he was saying much (I have a hard time understanding anyone with a thick accent, I'm not sure exactly why).

The commencement speech, on the other hand... Well, let's say he did not have much of a rapport, if any, with the crowd. The choice of messages was a brave one, and at least somewhat interesting, but I got extremely bored with the delivery when I started to be able to predict the upcoming lines and themes. So I ended up reading the handy book I'd brought with about halfway through, checking every few minutes to see if I could still predict where he was. mf0m, says Cao Cao, who is trying to help me write this entry. I'm not sure what that means, but clearly Cao Cao had a strong opinion on the commencement speech too, and he didn't even go!

Let me see, what else about graduation. I still wish the glee clubs were allowed to sing the hallelujah chorus, rather than the adapted version, it just doesn't sound right to me. As far as people walking goes, I was there to see two people from my lab graduate (Jongmin, Rebecca), and one from another lab who I've worked with a decent bit (Justin). They all graduated, not much suspense there, but it was nice to be able to see it. :) I also got to meet (a little while later) the person who did all the paintings for Erik and our lab which were on display at the lab art show two weeks ago, she is a friend of Erik's and came by on a tour of the art display (still up since the art show, as Erik has been out of town.)

Anyways, that's about it for graduation. I'm glad I went, but I'm a bit tired cause I didn't sleep well and got up a bit earlier than usual for it.