Morning commute (annual commencement edition)

[magid]

It's not raining this morning, not even dimpling the surfaces of eager puddles, certainly not like yesterday's pouring rain and driving wind. But when I got outside, I could feel droplets. It's... misting heavily. Almost mizzling, perhaps, but not quite.

My steps turned automatically towards Harvard, the usual morning route, but I remembered in time I'd have to circle the Yard (my memory being helped along by a robed grad student coming out of a house just in front of me, giving me plenty of time to think about robe colors*). I got to the science center in time to see the start of the grad student march (into the Yard, I assume), taking some circuitous route rather than the gate that was right there. For an extremely exclusive institution, they have a lot of grad students finishing. There was someone playing the bagpipes in the Yard. Most of the time it was pleasant, until something happened that turned it sour-sounding (I'm sure the weather wasn't helping, but, wow, the bad parts were really bad). Students were handing out plastic-wrapped complimentary copies of the Crimson to anyone walking by. There were still a lot of spectating people who hadn't found the right entrance yet, plus some grad students running late, including the one dashing off the train as I started down the stairs. Not surprisingly, in the Square there are lots of cops around to deal with traffic and anything else that might happen, and a lot more flower sellers, too.

Amazingly, the trains were not only running conveniently, but weren't wholly packed, either.



* Harvard has such nice colors. I remember Elka, z"l, joking about choosing her next institution based on the colors she'd get to wear for graduation. I'd just be happy if my next robe turned out to be the traditional black; I've not had that yet. (High school was green (M) or white (F), college was blue (and flimsy), grad school was bright red (and flimsy, plus the hood was black lined with baby blue; not my finest fashion moment).)

Comments

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

Engineering is always orange and so not a good color. Graduation robes are always flimsy. The best moment of getting my PhD -- having my named announced/signed and getting hooded in front of thousands of people. The only people that get that treatment at NU graduations are the PhDs. I missed the master's robes, though, because you can store things in the sleeves (A trick that I learned from my grandmother who had a MS in nursing. She used to store M&Ms in the sleeves to deal with the long graduation ceremony each spring.). There is a nice, short article on the NU website (http://www.commencement.neu.edu/dress.html) about the history of academic dress.

[magid.livejournal.com]

If the orange is at least with a black gown... Halloween in May! (or June, as the case may be).

The high school robes weren't flimsy, because they were rentals. And the ones I saw today looked like the material was heavier than the ones I had to buy.

I'm not so into the named in front of people part; I think I'm a little too stage shy, or something. (You'd think I'd be over it, having had... *counts* seven graduations already. But I keep thinking skipping would be nice, except then I really don't have the excuse to get the hood, which for some reason I thought desirable (well, it was new for the last graduation, getting a hood), until I realized that wearing it without a button-down shirt to wrap a string around to hold the damned thing in place meant being continually in danger of accidental strangulation the entire time. (And now this has gone on entirely too long for a parenthetical remark, since it's obviously trying to overthrow the original paragraph!))

And only now do I get to find out the useful properties of the sleeves! (I wonder how many M&Ms I could fit in there....)

Cool article, thanks.

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

The sleeves are not only useful for M&Ms, but for your wallet and cellphone as well. The hood, itself, was meant to carry things. Since the scholars were living a life of poverty, people would put bread into the hood to help the starving scholars. My grandmother, always a bit of a joker, sometimes considered putting a loaf of bread in the hood for graduation. She had both a nice gown and nice hood, since she was teaching college and needed to wear it a few times a year. At some point, I would love to get the real hood, even if I never end up in academia.

I noticed the naming thing at MS ceremony. All of my graduations up to that point (4), I was named out loud. I was also "pre-hooded" on my two MS graduations. Considering it took 8 years to change fields and get my PhD, when I noticed what NU did for PhDs, I thought, "I'm really going to need that after 8 years." The really funny thing that I didn't think of until now is that there was a woman at my graduation that I had this really, really long history of behaving poorly around. She was graduating with her MS on the same day as me. When she ran into me, she had a look of "I cannot really believe that you are here on my special day" and then I am up there getting my named signed in front of thousands of people.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I have yet to have a cellphone while graduating, and though I do have wallet-equivalents, I'm not sure if (a) I had it in a bag that I either left at my seat or gave to my parents for the duration or (b) I was wearing clothes with pocketses to hold all sorts of not-needing-accessibility-during-the-ceremony stuff (I tend to wear regular clothes under a robe, not all dressed up girly clothes that would definitely be pocket-free (alas).).

Your grandmother sounds resourceful :-). Plus fun. I hadn't known about bread going into the hoods, though I'm pretty sure that the thing called a hood I got for the MAT would require very careful balancing to hold anything in it at all. I'm assuming these are descended from things that were much more hoodlike, then.

When and if I ever get a PhD, I suspect I'll feel differently about it all, having put in so much more time into it. (And, go you, for not acting poorly at graduation ;-)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

If the orange is at least with a black gown... Halloween in May! (or June, as the case may be).

There exists in my parents' house a photograph from my father's grad school graduation in the early 70s. It was taken at my parents' house, and it is of my father in his cap and gown (and orange hood) and beckyfeld (who was, I believe, no more than 5) dressed as a witch -- black robe, black hat, orange plastic pumpkin.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Sweet!

I can just imagine the comments she got at the graduation...

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

I tell you...the whole purse + graduation is such a pain. So many places no longer do hoods for MS degrees, opting for a sheet. While the sheet hood is easier to get strapped on correctly, it looks tacky.

My grandmother was actually probably one of the coolest people that ever lived. I miss her every day of the week still, even though she died 2 years ago. I owe so much of my life to her. I would have never gone to college, if she didn't make me.

[magid.livejournal.com]

A sheet hood? That sounds like something for the KKK, not graduation.

*sympathy* still on the loss of your grandmother.