A New Master

We have a new Master in the family!

Lauren graduated from Main Campus University last year with her Bachelor’s degree but even at the time we knew we’d be back in a year because she had already won admission to a 4+1 Master’s degree program, where you start taking your graduate courses during your senior year of undergraduate and then finish up in one year rather than two. It’s a nice program and she seemed happy with it, and this past weekend she graduated again, a newly minted Master of Agricultural and Applied Economics.

Naturally, as the proud parents we are, we were there to celebrate. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Plus this was also the year that many of her friends graduated as well, including both of her apartment-mates – Aleksia and Anita – and Chase, who has been part of the group since high school, among others. So it was going to be a fiesta of epic proportions is what I’m saying here, and that’s just the sort of thing you put on your calendar and circle in bright primary colors to remind other events that they aren’t nearly as important.

Friday was the small ceremony, the one that was just for Lauren’s department within the larger college, which is itself just a part of the larger university, and it’s a really nice event. Lauren’s program is pretty small and not everyone comes to the ceremony so there were maybe two dozen graduates in attendance ranging from undergraduates all the way up to PhDs. They have a couple of short speeches from the higher-ups and then they call each of the graduates up to the podium by name to receive a certificate. The diploma comes in the mail later. The graduates have worked hard for this and they deserve to hear their name called, and this is when that happens because if they tried that at the big university-wide commencement they’d still be there when the stadium started hosting football games again. Also, the department provides food so you know it’s going to be a good time.

But first we had to get there.

I had to teach my last class for Far Away Campus that morning, and the moment I got off the Zoom call I dashed out to my car and careened up the road toward the main event of the day. Kim was already up there, as she had long ago volunteered to be in a medical study at the university hospital and they had some tests they wanted to run on her early that morning. It took me a while to find a parking spot – as a veteran of these events I knew to search the garages on the outskirts of campus so the only trick was actually getting to one of them and let me tell you that was indeed a bit of magic in the end – and eventually we all met up at Lauren’s apartment, hanging out and getting ready for the ceremony.

From there it was a good walk on a lovely day over to where the ceremony would be held, stopping along the way to take photos.

The gown you get as a Master’s graduate has funkier sleeves than the one they give to the Bachelors grads. They have deep pockets and you can store all sorts of things in those sleeves in fact, and this, dear reader, is called foreshadowing. Lauren wore that gown a lot while she had it, since it is fairly pricy to rent and she wanted to get her money’s worth out of it. She reported that the hood was actually the best part of the ensemble and that seems about right.

We met up with Kim’s parents at the ceremony – somehow they found a parking spot right nearby, which is astonishing for graduation weekend – and we all hung out at a table waiting for events to start, munching on tasties and generally having a good time. It turned out that the woman who sat next to Kim had been at the same university at the same time as my mom, just a couple of years behind. For all we know they had classes together. And thanks to the miracle of modern communication technology Lauren managed to talk with Shai, who is currently doing his post-doc in Sweden and therefore seven hours ahead of us.

It was a brief but lovely ceremony, as described above. It is a beautiful thing to see your child work hard, do well, and be rewarded for it, after all. And then there were photos. Lots of photos, because moments like this deserve to be remembered. There were family photos, of course.

And photos with friends and her advisor.

And Bucky showed up because an event is not complete without Bucky.

Bucky doesn’t say anything when he visits. He mostly jumps and gestures and bounces around from person to person, and you sort of expect that, but I will admit to being surprised to learn that the headpiece of that costume is structural enough that Bucky can do a hands-free headstand. Color me impressed.

Awarded and celebrated, we decided to walk around for a while, enjoying the day and basking in the glow of a degree well earned. We slowly made our way over to the nearby Student Union, a place that Grandpa had never actually visited before so it was quite an experience. The Union sits on the shore of one of the big lakes in town and it’s a gorgeous spot. You understand why it is one of the main centers of campus life once you’ve sat out there on the terrace on a bright spring afternoon.

The chairs are copyrighted, by the way. I’m not making that up.

There was a bit of a line to take pictures with the big Bucky statue and one of the PhD graduates who came after us used her photo opportunity to make a baby announcement as well, holding an ultrasound picture in front of her gown. Lauren and I congratulated her and pointed out that Lauren was in that position during my own PhD graduation ceremony, and we all agreed that was a pretty cool echo of past to present.

From there we walked over to the Peruvian restaurant for an early dinner – a tradition of sorts, in the sense that anything done twice on purpose is a tradition. It’s a place that we’ve gone to a lot over the years and they have good food, which is all we ask.

Grandma and Grandpa dropped us off at the top of the hill on their way home after that, and we continued our photo project. We stopped by a couple of buildings, including the one where Lauren’s department is housed – a comfortable old building tucked away between other buildings so that if you didn’t know to look for it you’d never find it – before ending up at a small garden space. It was lovely just to walk around together and share the time.

By this point it was getting late and Lauren had plans for the evening and we had to get home, so I dropped Kim off at the hospital parking lot so she could retrieve her car and then dropped Lauren off at her apartment before heading back home, one day down and a much busier day to come.

Saturday was the big ceremony, the one for the entire university, and if you’ve not been to a Main Campus University graduation before it is an experience and a half, though in a good way. The day started off early, as Lauren, Aleksia, and Anita had planned a breakfast spread in their apartment for friends and family. We’d volunteered to bring coffee so at 7:45am there we were, at the best coffee place in Our Little Town, picking up two thermal urns of coffee along with a pile of supplies. “What do we owe you?” we asked. “Not sure,” they said. “Bring them back on Monday and we’ll figure it out.” In the end it was about the same as two or three of those goofy drinks from the National Mermaid Chain and much better coffee to boot, according to those who drink coffee, so buy local.

We got up to the apartment and found The Best Parking Spot Ever. Seriously – right in front of their apartment building, not ten paces from the front door. On graduation day! We should have bought a lottery ticket. Kim did an astonishing job of wiggling the minivan into a space about 18 inches bigger than the van and there it sat for the rest of the day. We brought up the coffee and everything else we had packed into the car, and from there I went out to get donuts.

There’s an astonishingly good donut shop just around the corner from their apartment – one of the few that still does everything on site – and they were happy to provide two dozen freshly baked donuts for a reasonable sum. I was wearing my “Lauren’s Dad” t-shirt because this is the day for that t-shirt after all, and as I’m walking back to the apartment some passerby shouted, “Hey, that’s Lauren’s Dad!” Thank you, good citizen! No autographs please!

The breakfast was lovely. There was a lot of good food and drinks, including a number of variations on mimosas which I had never had before and now I know to have again. There were a lot of good people. And the skeleton was decorated for the occasion, which is how you know the party is going to be thumping.

The roommates were in fine form.

As were friends.

And family.

There was a cake, which was remarkably tasty.

And a shotski, which I’m sure is a thing that exists outside of Wisconsin but we’re professionals in this state so just stand back and let the experts demonstrate how it’s done.

There’s a story behind this photo, as there is with all of the best photos.

Aleksia put together a short video with the graduates in this position for the first few seconds, and then it suddenly switches over to the opposite-gender parents in the exact same poses. There I am, on the left, with my hands on my knee. Very demure. Very mindful. I have seen the final video and it worked as advertised, but you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.

At some point a fairly good percentage of the group was outside on the balcony ringing little cowbells at the graduates walking by on the path toward the stadium. They seemed happy to have the attention, and it made the day just that much more festive.

I think of all the photos from the breakfast, though, this may well have been my favorite. They’ve lived together for three years now, and on this day we celebrate them all.

At some point we all noticed that it was getting toward graduation ceremony time and began making shooing motions toward the door. It’s not a long walk over to the stadium but somehow we managed to get separated into at least three different groups along the way, and somehow – rather less plausibly – we all managed to meet up again just inside the gate on the way in. Not sure how that happened, but it was an auspicious event so we’re just going to run with it.

It has to be said that whoever organized this year’s graduation was far more on the ball than the folks who did it last year – you got the impression that they’d done it before, for one thing. Last year it took us over an hour to get into the stadium. This year it was about 5-10 minutes. Part of the reason for that became clear to me when my camera bag set off the security device and the guy with the reflective vest sort of looked at me, rolled his eyes a bit, and then ignored me. Hey – I’m pretty harmless, what can I say.

We found our way to the upper deck on the shady side of the stadium this year. It was significantly cooler than last year and overcast, so the sunburn problem was much less, and there was a nice breeze going as well. We got there early enough so that the whole group could sit together.

Soon the place was full, though – from the nosebleed seats all the way down to the field where the graduates sat. I never did find Lauren on that field – she’s in the front-most house-right section, with all of the other Master’s students with their yellow hoods – but we did find Anita and Aleksia. Anita is holding Aleksia’s pink mortarboard and Aleksia is sitting just to the left of her. They’re in the section closest to us – house-right, furthest from the stage – not far from the aisle.

Lauren had stashed a good supply of miniature bottles of something in her gown sleeves – for my non-American readers, those bottles are called “shooters” and we Americans know by context whether we’re talking about alcohol or guns because ‘MURCA – and passed them around during the ceremony. She was not the only one doing this at this university, where students and staff all take a certain amount of pride in their drinking powers, and they were well received. She was, however, in all likelihood the only person who thought to stash a vuvuzela in her sleeve. She said that this did not go over nearly as well with the people around her, which is a sign of our humorless times.

It was a surprisingly nice ceremony. The student speakers were interesting. Everyone booed the Chancellor since she a) has made some rather unpopular decisions over the last year or so, and b) left for another job two days later, though it has to be said that she did a nice job of keeping her speech focused on the graduates and not herself. The invited speaker was James Patterson, a novelist whose work I have never actually read but who acquitted himself well. It started a bit rough but we all enjoyed it by the end, especially when he took his shot at the Chancellor (“You know, dear, you can only go through the Transfer Portal so many times…”). At the three-quarter mark of the ceremony they had everyone do Jump Around, as traditional. And they didn’t pipe out the graduates to a song about stripping for a living like they did last year, so that was nice.

One of the lessons we learned last year was not to try to meet up outside of the stadium after the ceremony ended. There is no win there. Fortunately the apartment was close by and we gathered there to graze on the copious remains of the breakfast feast and spend some quality downtime. Conversations ebbed and flowed. Naps were taken. It was a nice break in the action.

Eventually a good chunk of the group went to the Engineering graduation ceremony, where Chase got his degree. The rest of us – those who remained – hung out until the ceremony was over before meeting up at a chicken place on State Street where we had a lovely dinner and watched my Flyers get eliminated from the NHL playoffs, alas. They played well and exceeded expectations for the season but just ran into a better team and that’s all there was too it.

After dinner we ended up at a piano bar, a crowded, dimly lit place that had two baby grand pianos, a little drum kit, and three musicians cycling through them taking requests that the audience would sing along to. They were impressed by Nolan’s singing voice, and to be fair he did major in musical theater. And not long before we left the musicians played the song that Kim asked for – You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman – and that got one of the louder sing-alongs of the night. It is a lovely thing to be out and about with your daughter and her friends, even if by that point you are very tired.

I don’t know where Lauren and the other younger folks went after we left – I have no doubt their evening was nowhere near done – but Kim and I got home around 1am and poured ourselves into bed like day-old coffee.

It was a lovely weekend celebrating good people and their achievements. I wish them all good things in their lives ahead.

Well done, Lauren. I’m proud of you.