Graduation speeches are usually filled with trite "inspirational" quotes they insert between personal anecdotes. There are usually popular authors that are used over and over again. For example: Marianne Williamson, Walt Whitman, Ghandi, etc.. Let me say it again: trite. Perhaps I'm a little cynical. After all, this is my 5th graduation if you count junior high to high school. Including that awkward junior high commencement, this was the worst. I can attribute many colliding factors into this ranking dead last in my personal experience:
1) It was run by psychologists. I have nothing against psychologists; after yesterday officially I am one, but that gives me a bit more of a leg to stand on with my argument. Let me dig my own grave a little deeper. In my professional past I have known psychologists to be a bit tedious, perseverating upon the smallest details and over-inflating their egos. I know one who threw a tantrum after he didn't get the office with a window. His logic was he was a doctor, NOT to be confused with a M.D. because that would be insulting - in his most humble opinion, of course. This logically outranked everyone else so he was entitled to the window office. By far they are the most egotistical and self unaware profession of the psychosocial field - in my most humble opinion, of course. So, you can imagine that given their natural tendencies to perseverate and be ego-centric, the program was all about them.
2) I'm not certain how the commencement speaker was selected, but she was terrible. I knew it was bad when I began plotting ways to insult her publicly after 40 minutes of her monologue. This woman was a nun who tangentially gave a historic timeline of how she saved the world post-Katrina in Louisiana. There was nothing mentioned about the various degrees being conferred. Nothing about how we can be the change we want to see. Nothing remotely in line with organizational psychology, school psychology, counseling, or PsyD. This woman actually credited all of the art therapists who came from CALIFORNIA. Multiple times. Hello? We are in MASSACHUSETTS. I was in the front row and didn't bother to hide my boredom, frustration, and lack of interest. I tapped my shoes, whispered to my classmate, stared/rolled my eyes/made exasperated faces at the President on the dais (who was also fidgeting with his robe and checking his watch), and began to slouch. (I know, super mature, right? Whatever, man, I'm on my way out!!) One of my classmates leaned over to me in the middle and whispered, "I'm not even excited to graduate anymore." How daft was this nun? There were small children in the audience waiting to see mom or dad graduate, pregnant women, and yes even some of the graduates got up from their seats to get water or go to the restroom in the middle of her speech only to return and find she was still rambling on about Renaissance Village in October of 2006. Annoyed? I'm beyond annoyed and when I get there I kind of get a steam roller attitude: flatten, survey the damage, and then evaluate if you want to apologize. The woman was, and perhaps still is, in my direct path of steam rolling. The "speech" lasted somewhere around 50 minutes. It's hard to be happy when you are raging.
3) Because the ceremony was over 2 hours long to graduate roughly 100 students, I was extremely embarrassed for my invited guests. How dare I waste a Sunday afternoon of theirs? One of my guests bought a new gizmo to videotape the graduation so my parents could watch the ceremony later. Ironically, it ran out of space just before we were announced and I went up on stage to receive my diploma and get hooded. There was no memento mori because of that stupid nun, the inefficient program organizer who perhaps neglected to give time limits in her directions, or the ego maniac speakers who disregarded the limits they may or may not have been given in the first place. I spent the reception basically apologizing to my guests and commiserating with other graduates. Several just left because they were running late. Even one of my professors left half way through because it was running so long and she had child care issues.
4) No alcohol at the reception. After that pain we should have had an open bar. I saw one person with a glass of wine and wondered if she had snuck over to the adjacent hotel bar.
5) It was held in a hotel ballroom. The whole academia mystique gets lost when you are not in some marble hall on campus, but in a conference center/wedding reception site/generic jejune room with folding walls. The academic snob comes out in me. When I was at Tulane it was a magnificent event. It was efficient (e.g. 1 hour), in a stately location (an estate building on campus), not held on a Sunday afternoon when rates were probably lower, and perhaps it was just more special because it was my first masters. I also gave a speech that year as president of the school. For the record: it was actually geared towards the audience and lasted only 10 minutes. This leads me to my next point.
6) The student speaker gave a speech that was equivocal to something I composed for my 6th grade Reflections competition. He used the schools acronym, MSPP, to elucidate what each letter stood for and meant to him personally. The large discordance occurred with the letter "M" standing for Multiculturalism. There were 3 Black students and only a handful of Latinos. Seriously? After that obvious glare I tuned out for the rest of his talk. It was a bit of a controversy that they selected a non-doctoral student to be the speaker this year. On a plus side, it was like living in a Sesame Street episode. Today's graduation was brought to you by the letters, M, S, and P.
There were a couple of highlights, don't get me wrong. My name was pronounced correctly. This is big because you could be surprised how many people get it wrong. Another plus was having my Boston family there. They sacrificed a weekend afternoon so the least we could do was treat them to some tapas in Waltham. Judy, my adopted Boston mom, was so excited about my accomplishment she brought roses, the new video camera, a card, and two books with very touching inscriptions. J has hood envy. Apparently he didn't get to keep his hood from medical school. I told him since I now have two we can share. In fact, I now have two robes as well so we could dress up as pseudo Harry Potter characters for next Halloween.
After it was all over, my anger shifted into something that resembled December 26th as a child. It was kind of like, "Really? That's it? I'm done? You seriously mean I don't have anymore text books, papers, team projects, class, nothing? Really?! Huh? So now what do I do?" As I began to spiral, J also began to sink. He started feeling guilty he didn't get the exact video or that a lot of his shots were blurry or that he was being a stealth paparazzi and took angled photos off from the side vs. going up the center aisle and being obvious. Don't worry, though! Judy had no problem marching up to take my photo with the president. When he asked if she was family it was all I could do but say, "Yup." Close enough. I couldn't manage two spiraling people so J went to bed early. That was smart. Me? I sat up for a while staring at my new diploma, putting my hood back on and trying to get Edgar to sit still while I took a photo of him wearing my graduation cap. It was just one more blurry shot.
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