October 25, 2013

Which actually happened last Friday as I'm sure most of you know but I didn't want to write about it until I'd had some time to sit back and reflect on what happened and what it actually means to me, if anything at all.

Here goes:

It's not about you, the graduand, at all.

Which seems like an obvious statement but when you spend a bunch of time preparing for what is supposed to be one of the most important moments of your adult life, your transition from being a lowly student to being a lowly intern or administrative assistant or whatever, you kind of expect it to focus a little more on you which it really doesn't. Or mine didn't, at least.



The UW sent out this "what to expect when you graduate" form a few weeks before which, in addition to providing me with my place in line and gown rental info also said that Convocation lasts around 2 1/2 hours which I assumed meant that there would be a speech or two and then a bunch of us graduating because that's why we were there.

This was an incorrect assumption on my part.

Instead I sat with my graduating class in an auditorium while a bunch of people awarded degrees and titles to each other and gave flowery speeches about how great they, the person giving them the award, and the university in general was.

It also happened to be the 100th Convocation which meant that they felt the need to give awards to dead people as well as people who could be there to accept them.

The whole ceremony was so long that it had an intermission for people to get up and stretch their legs and during which my poor Nan and Granddad had to leave because they actually had other stuff to go and do and hadn't expected to be there that long. Luckily for the time that they were there I was seated close enough to them that we could make faces and eyerolls at one another to indicate how bored we were, so that was nice.

All in all the whole ceremony was nearly three hours, two and a half of which the University of Winnipeg staff and alumni spent patting itself on the back instead of recognizing the students they were supposedly there to honour. The actual process of everyone going up, walking across the stage to shake the necessary hands and get their diplomas, and sitting back down took about twenty minutes.

I was too hot, stiff, bored, tired and absolutely starving by the end of it.

But that weird feeling of pride, that swelling in my chest when I moved that silly tassel from the right side to the left of my mortarboard was something I'm so, so glad that I experienced.

Even if it still doesn't feel quite real just yet.

---