Graduation ceremonies are a fickle thing; you spend a good hour or two sitting through something you are completely uninterested in for around ten seconds of redemption that is “the walk”. It’s a show meant to be for parents, to show that their financial support and patience the last 4+ years actually amounted to some level of accomplishment, and what better way to cap the end of a hard-earned, intense, four-year run through an undergraduate degree than a long and superficial show?I had the honor of attending Sui’s graduation from the MCB major at Berkeley this last Friday, and – forgive me for being so condescending here – it was essentially what I described above, having to trade a few hours of boredom and discomfort for the few seconds when it really mattered: when Sui was striding across the stage in her black robe and square hat looking very much like the girl who took everything Berkeley threw at her and made slimy biological goo out of it. It was a proud moment for me, her, her parents and family, as well as her friends that drove over from UC Davis; so closes an early chapter of her life with another one following right along.
On some level, I relate to the organizers in the MCB department about organizing something like the graduation ceremony, year after year. It’s the same formula, though:
- Speech from head of the department and/or the dean of the college (students overcame challenges, great opportunities ahead, they’re all very smart, etc.)
- Speech from keynote speaker (these students are the wave of the future, here’s some advice from thirty years in industry)
- Go through student awards (chance for nerds to shine)
- Speech from student/facility speaker (chatter for a few minutes, reflect on school experience, talk about cliche of learning a lot about life without realizing that itself is cliche)
- Hand out fake diplomas (…cannot…pronounce…phonetically spelled names…)
And for 95% of the people attending, the first four parts is a form of payment for the privilege of sitting through the fifth. Rarely, you’ll get an interesting speech from the industry or the student/facility, but it’s hard to be good up on that podium when you know your audience just wishes you would shut up and move along. Then again, illiterate monkeys could have told the speaker that talking about politics to a class of 450+ graduating students majoring in biology wasn’t a good idea.
But no, this isn’t about stupid primates or graduation cliches; this is about Sui’s accomplishments in the last four years and how she’s grown: from a wide-eyed little girl entering a world-class university to get a college education, into a wide-eyed (slightly older) little girl re-entering that same university to learn how to take care of little eyeballs.
Congratulations!