Gradumicated.

You read it right. I'm done. Graduated. "Enlightend". Freedom. Moving out. Money. 9-5 Work day. Real world. Crap.

Everyone says they can't wait to graduate, but the reality is, we can wait forever to graduate. Once you're out, you're done, and bam, you have to be a responsible member of society. It's fun, exciting--hell I'm looking forward to not being broke constantly--but really, I think we would all rather be in school forever.

They say Tech is a great school to have gone to. I see why. Our alumni are extremely loyal -- sometimes to cult levels. I see where that sense of pride comes from. It's along the lines of emerging from a great battle as a survivor, knowing you made it through what others couldn't. It can make you a conceited sunnuvabitch. But still, I do thumb my nose at all those who trashed on tech, saying it sucks, there's no women, we're miserable, etc. In the long run, we're better off. We know we're making sacrifices to better ourselves for the future.

As far as women go, just remember this: there's no such thing as an ugly rich guy.

CEREMONY FROM HELL: I must say, I would have never endured this graduation ceremony if I didn't suffer through 5 years of Tech. I paid to walk across this stage, in money, sleep, and sanity, and dammit, I'm gonna walk. So I did. But it took me nearly 5 hours to get this done.

Problem is, my class was one of the largest graduating classes in Tech's history. Tech, being the schtickler for tradition that it is, insists on doing the whole ceremony, undergrad, masters, grads, cafeteria workers, and all, in one run. In a way, it's symbolic of Tech's reputation for getting it done and over with a complete disregard for comfort. At least the seats were padded.

We arrived at 8AM - I managed to con a ride out of Ben, and James was tagging along because he had nothing (and I mean absolutely nothing) better to be doing on a Saturday morning. There was absolute organized chaos in the parking deck. Imagine 2000+ students getting themselves in alphabetical order by major. I must say, I was impressed that by 9AM, we were all lined up and ready to go. Tech must have called on the resources of its #1 Industrial Engineering program to accomplish this feat.

I think a large portion of us were severely hungover, or looking at oncoming hangovers from the night before. To my great surprise and relief, they had a giant watercooler for us down there. This took the edge off. The two hours of sleep the night before weren't helping.

One of the nice parts of having a huge ceremony is that it was easy to doze off without worrying about being noticed. We also found it was easy to chat and screw around during the ceremony. All the better. Our commencement speaker was this depressing guy from the department of energy, basically saying that the world was boned unless we did something about it. Thanks for the encouragement, buddy.

The actual reading of the names seemed to stretch for an eternity. This is because Tech had the entire population of Bejing and New Delhi walking through the ranks of our PhD program. I doubt most of those guys spoke English as a first language. The rest of us were rudely awakened from our half-slumbers and we eventually wandered up to the stage to receive what turned out to be a rolled up poster witha ribbon tied on it.

Tech's graduation is done in the order of the age of the colleges. So, with the College of Engineering being the first college at tech, we get to go LAST. Within the COE, the majors go in reverse order. And, it turns out Electrical Engineering was the second major at Tech....

I'll spare you the rest of the gory details. To sum up the ceremony, it was indeed a microcosm of life at Tech. Of the people who started it, only 60% of them made it through awake, and were miserable while they were there but damn happy once they were done. It builds character. I'm telling you.

--P