May is the month for various different things like days getting longer, the beginning of summer movie season (that is, before the pandemic), but this year the college graduation ceremonies take on added significance due to the cancellation of last year. I've been to several graduation ceremonies, not only my own: my parents' (vaguely remember as a kid watching as my mom received a PhD at Illinois Institute of Technology, which looking back is probably the most significant achievement anyone in our family has ever claimed. It wasn't a PhD in humanities or kinesiology neither; it was organic chemistry, and my mom hints sometimes at staying awake night after night trying to good grades while pregnant with me as well as when I was a kid.) Students work really hard, and the ceremony seems like a quick celebration in comparison....everyone shows up, degrees are conferred, someone gives a speech.......really formulaic and similar to a wedding in the vein of "seen one, and seen them all."
After a lengthy lockdown and lack of things to get excited about, a graduation ceremony is like a visual overload, an explosion of stimuli and people. Hey look, tons of people dressed up well and gathering not at Costco or Trader Joe's......is this real life? Hearing about undergrad college students' experiences seems distant but vaguely nostalgic, like I could have lived that life, except 12 years ago. Someone remarked at this year's graduation that this year's graduates were barely born in the 20th century.......give it one more year and all the students will be 2000s babies........somewhat horrifying how old the rest of us are becoming.
Just like outdoor/indoor weddings, there's a big contrast between indoor and outdoor graduation ceremonies.......after receiving a mask tan (my mask was covering my face but the rest of my face burned) and being underneath the blazing sun for 3+ hours (it started at 8:30AM and the sun gradually crept up on us) I think I prefer the indoor and the consistent temperatures, but there is something about the acoustics of a bowl-shaped football stadium that can't be replaced by an indoor basketball arena.
I felt a little bit of a "aristocrats vs. peasants" vibe with graduation ceremonies because all of the audience are parents and family members of graduates who helped pay for the commoners to attend the university, while the graduates themselves also file into the hall like lemmings wearing the same clothing at a university with thousands of people as a tuition-payng "number" forced to face the stage but being soaked in the sun, but the higher levels of the academic society sit in the shade on the stage facing out into the crowd, wearing distinctive robes showing that they are above others and having various honors and pedigree. I guess they have earned it, but definitely a bit of a "haves v. have-nots" mentality.
I do like that graduation weekend is one of the busiest weekends of the year for small college towns. I didn't think about that living in L.A. attending USC Law School, but for a small town like Champaign, Illinois, or Durham, North Carolina or Collegetown, U.S.A., it's a big deal for the local economy, especially since there's only so many quality restaurants and places to go in the town, it should be packed. And with the pandemic locking down everything in the past year, this might have been these small business's best time to shine....and make up for lost income.
MJ had skipped all her previous graduation ceremonies, so this was her first one! She liked it, and I had to admit I kind of did too, despite telling her it doesn't matter if she goes or not. (I've always been in the camp of "it's a waste of time and energy to have all the parents show up, see what they paid for, make a big show of everything that's an optional activity). But when I look back at life, which (as Matt Damon once quoted in the obscure movie Dogma) is a series of moments, and a graduation ceremony just adds another moment in that list, something to give closure and finality to a college experience, I would say it's worth doing. But next time I'll be ready for the sun if it's outdoors.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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