he knows it's all worthwhile
Monday, 10 December 2007 06:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtSo, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wolverine_nun is now a doc (yay!), causing a certain confusion in the ranks of stv's superhero powers of nicknaming. (I've been "The Doc" for years). I do like graduation ceremonies: these days there's a certain sausage machine component to the whole thing, having to shunt nearly 5000 students through in five days, ten ceremonies, but the ritual and emotional aspects get me every time. In a bizarre sort of way grad is akin to some of the pleasures of the SCA - this is public recognition framed in a 1000-year-old idiom, a secular ceremony with religious trappings denuded of all but their emotional symbolism. Grad ceremonies are one of the approximately four thousand random things that infallibly make me cry.
The ceremonies at my Cherished Institution are particularly layered, since this is, after all, the multi-cultural New South Africa, with its own unique take on the rituals of English history. We graduate each student individually, and the whole Oxbridge schtick - academic procession, mace-bearers, the singing of "Gaudeamus Igitur", the formal presentation of the candidates to the Vice-Chancellor to be capped and hooded - is leavened by the administration's cheerful and upfront deconstruction of its significance, coupled with their encouragement of more traditionally African outbreaks of joy at the successful graduation of your own particular grad. So, Oxbridge schtick with shouts, whistles, ululation and, in extreme cases, dancing in the aisles.
The vibe is good, but the weird conglomeration of traditions also serves to highlight the particular social context. Your average ululating parent is probably not the new black rich, but represents the lower class origin of an intelligent student who has quite possibly overcome huge educational and financial disadvantages to be here at all. Graduation is not just a student's individual success, it represents the raising of an entire family in the social stakes, the New South Africa actually, for once, visibly at work down the generations. I grok this. On a level quite apart from my general teacherly satisfaction at all these bright kids who done good, it makes me very happy and not a little weepy.
Of course, today was a bit out of my usual bailiwick, being a science grad and all, but it also warms the cockles of my basically geeky heart to see some of the science paraded here. The honorary doctorate was to someone who basically defined the ocean/atmosphere interrelations in the El Nino effect, and one of the fellowships was awarded to someone doing research in quark flavours. The simple fact of a professor being hauled up and ceremonially accorded medieval dignities for work in quarks labelled up, down, strange, charm and beauty makes me think that, in spite of everything, somewhere, something must be right with the world.
Obligatory postmodern comment, though: the emotional component to this celebration has to work bloody hard to transcend the tendency to relocate meaning into gosh-darned representation rather than the thing itself. The graduands were skewered on camera angles: no less than four photo ops were automatically activated from all four corners of the hall, photos for optional purchase later. This in addition to the cameras and digital cameras of the audience, and in some cases the graduands themselves. These days it ain't real unless it's a media representation. A commercialised media representation. But I think the ululation evades capture.
(Speaking of translocation of meaning into media representation: today's XKCD? Genius.)
Last Night I Dreamed: I was helpingfirst_fallen to strap things onto the top of her father's truck with acres of rope, when he took off down an incredibly steep hill with us still clinging to the sides of the vehicle. Later, my mother gave me a giant cube of heavily-iced cake.
wolverine_nun is now a doc (yay!), causing a certain confusion in the ranks of stv's superhero powers of nicknaming. (I've been "The Doc" for years). I do like graduation ceremonies: these days there's a certain sausage machine component to the whole thing, having to shunt nearly 5000 students through in five days, ten ceremonies, but the ritual and emotional aspects get me every time. In a bizarre sort of way grad is akin to some of the pleasures of the SCA - this is public recognition framed in a 1000-year-old idiom, a secular ceremony with religious trappings denuded of all but their emotional symbolism. Grad ceremonies are one of the approximately four thousand random things that infallibly make me cry.The ceremonies at my Cherished Institution are particularly layered, since this is, after all, the multi-cultural New South Africa, with its own unique take on the rituals of English history. We graduate each student individually, and the whole Oxbridge schtick - academic procession, mace-bearers, the singing of "Gaudeamus Igitur", the formal presentation of the candidates to the Vice-Chancellor to be capped and hooded - is leavened by the administration's cheerful and upfront deconstruction of its significance, coupled with their encouragement of more traditionally African outbreaks of joy at the successful graduation of your own particular grad. So, Oxbridge schtick with shouts, whistles, ululation and, in extreme cases, dancing in the aisles.
The vibe is good, but the weird conglomeration of traditions also serves to highlight the particular social context. Your average ululating parent is probably not the new black rich, but represents the lower class origin of an intelligent student who has quite possibly overcome huge educational and financial disadvantages to be here at all. Graduation is not just a student's individual success, it represents the raising of an entire family in the social stakes, the New South Africa actually, for once, visibly at work down the generations. I grok this. On a level quite apart from my general teacherly satisfaction at all these bright kids who done good, it makes me very happy and not a little weepy.
Of course, today was a bit out of my usual bailiwick, being a science grad and all, but it also warms the cockles of my basically geeky heart to see some of the science paraded here. The honorary doctorate was to someone who basically defined the ocean/atmosphere interrelations in the El Nino effect, and one of the fellowships was awarded to someone doing research in quark flavours. The simple fact of a professor being hauled up and ceremonially accorded medieval dignities for work in quarks labelled up, down, strange, charm and beauty makes me think that, in spite of everything, somewhere, something must be right with the world.
Obligatory postmodern comment, though: the emotional component to this celebration has to work bloody hard to transcend the tendency to relocate meaning into gosh-darned representation rather than the thing itself. The graduands were skewered on camera angles: no less than four photo ops were automatically activated from all four corners of the hall, photos for optional purchase later. This in addition to the cameras and digital cameras of the audience, and in some cases the graduands themselves. These days it ain't real unless it's a media representation. A commercialised media representation. But I think the ululation evades capture.
(Speaking of translocation of meaning into media representation: today's XKCD? Genius.)
Last Night I Dreamed: I was helping
first_fallen to strap things onto the top of her father's truck with acres of rope, when he took off down an incredibly steep hill with us still clinging to the sides of the vehicle. Later, my mother gave me a giant cube of heavily-iced cake.
