Five days after Joe’s version, I get to attend another graduation ceremony, only this time in professional rather than parental capacity, so I was sat up at the front. But it felt more like the back, and quite comfortably at the back, so I could get away with some photography. I am pleased with this shot: it was what I intended when the shutter was pressed.
The photo of Joe (with Clare) on 9/9/2021 was the last one of him taken before he headed north, to Dundee, and his studies at the University of Abertay. 1,391 days later, here he is at the other end — his graduation ceremony. Yes, of course I am a proud parent, how could it be otherwise? We cannot know what his future will bring, but he has made it to this particular transitional point relatively unscathed, at least. Congratulations to him and everyone else from Abertay (it’s a small college and so got through the entirety of its graduations in two ceremonies today: at Manchester there are three ceremonies a day for two whole weeks).
Not that I’ve had anything to do with the preliminaries since completing my marking duties in January, but graduation season is here. Congratulations to all. Although I’d take these three more seriously if any one of them looked a bit happier about it.
I’d say ‘it’s that time of year again’ but this is the first mid-July since 2019 where there have been such scenes around campus. Ceremony does matter: it’s good to see these return.
We don’t normally do spring graduations. These are replacements for the ceremonies that were going to take place in December and then were cancelled at two day’s notice because everyone in ‘Authority’ had another outbreak of paranoia that — let’s look back and be honest about this — turned out to have very little basis in sensible judgments of risk. Anyway, I’m glad they finally made it. It offers a, hopefully singular, opportunity to picture the daffodil/graduation conjunction. And yes, the litter is there but let’s try to work it into the composition somehow.
I made it onto campus today, at least. I like this shot of the ventilation chimneys outside the tents set up to suppor this week’s graduation ceremonies; look at the top-right third of the shot and see how it is disorted by the heat coming out of the main stack.
When graduation ceremonies have appeared on here in the past they have either been those at Manchester or a couple in Moscow, back a few years ago. But this one, today, is at the University of Leeds — and I was not present through professional duty but personal connection, seeing as it was Clare who was celebrating the award of her (second) MA in Psychotherapy and Counselling. Well done to her and to everyone else there today — our C was at the front, far away from the camera, but these graduates nearer where I was sat capture the mood of the day just as well.
The twice-yearly graduation ceremonies give us the chance to dress up in our finery and enjoy some pomp and circumstance. Opportunities to do that are getting fewer in the world so let’s embrace them while they still exist. And as ever, congratulations to all the students as well.
It’s that time of year again. It crossed my mind today that it’s now twenty years since I first graduated, in July 1997. Gosh…
Congratulations to all my students who graduated from the class of 2015 at today’s ceremony — and indeed to all students everywhere, who work bloody hard, you know.
Being 42 