Graduation
Finally recovered enough from a somewhat exhausting graduation day to post. Barring minor hitches, it all went pretty well, and I'm now a proud graduate of Strathclyde University.
I woke up in Dundee at 6:45am (after finally getting to sleep around 4am), jumped on a bus into town, changed buses onto the Megabus to Glasgow, and finally arrived in Glasgow at 10:45. Grabbed my tickets from Registry, and was told that I had to be seated by 2:30pm. That was all fine - I had plenty of time to take the train home, grab a bite to eat, and get all smartened up for the ceremony.
So, I got home, had a chat with Mum, checked out my suit, attempted (not very successfully) to convince my hair to resemble anything but a curly haystack, then settled down to wait for everyone else to get ready. 'Everyone else' consisted of Mum and Dad - my sister was busy teaching at Camp America, and Nate was still in Dundee. I'd phoned up to find out whether I'd got any extra tickets (since I had been in Dundee and thus unable to pick up my tickets in person) and had been told that nobody had got extra tickets and I only had the two guest tickets that came as standard; extra guests were invited to watch via video link, but faced with being stuck in a video room filled with people he didn't know halfway across campus, then having to head straight back up to Dundee afterwards, Nate elected to stay up north.
It was around this point that I noticed, buried in the middle of the ceremony booklet, that I was actually meant to turn up at least an hour before the ceremony, and was meant to be in posession of my gown before that; as well as that, gown collection was from the University Centre near the union, all the way across campus from the actual ceremony. Luckily, my parents were ready, so we jumped into the car and headed off.
Halfway down the road, I realised that in my haste, I'd forgotten the receipt I'd been sent by Ede and Ravenscroft. We had to turn back and hurry home, grab the receipt, and drive back as fast as possible through steadily increasing traffic. I started to panic as the clock passed 2:00pm - the time by which I was meant to have registered.
I jumped out of the car on Cathedral Street, legged it to the University Centre opposite the Union, and picked my gown. It turned out that I didn't even have the necessary receipt for that: I'd picked up the photography receipt, but gown hire was done under a separate confirmation number which had come in my email. Of course, with my laptop dead for the last week, I hadn't been able to check my email, so I hadn't even realised. Luckily, the woman from Ede and Ravenscroft had a list of order numbers and verified my name from the photography receipt, so I grabbed the gown and started half-running across the campus to the Barony Hall.
As I went, I noticed I was passing quite a lot of other students in gowns. None of them seemed to be in a hurry. After finding the hall (every time I go to it I seem to take a completely different route) and finding the entrance to the room in which registry was being held (I didn't even know the Barony had a side entrance, let alone an entire complex of rooms off the main hall) I threw on my gown and stood in the queue to sign the graduation registry, taking the opportunity to catch my breath.
It didn't take long to register, and I noticed plenty of people arriving after me. Nobody even mentioned the 'arrive at least an hour early' thing. I received a leaflet which repeated the order of events set out in the ticket pack booklet (handily: I'd given the booklet to my parents because of the map of campus on the back) and which had my seat number on it. An organiser pointed me to my seat, and before the ceremony started, the Alumni Department head gave us a short talk about the ceremony and how to hold our hoods before encouraging us to keep in touch after graduating. The organisation in the hall was a pleasant surprise after the lack of communication leading up to the event - I didn't even know about signing up for graduation until our head of year sent a link to the graduation website in an email, and details of tickets, gown pickup, times etc were only made available five days before the ceremony.
Unfortunately, everyone from my old CES degree was seated in rows H and I, and I was in row J - nominally behind them, but row I was the last row in their area, and J was upstairs. I only got to talk to people for a few seconds before heading off. Confusingly, people were congratulating me on winning a prize... nobody had told me anything about a prize! I checked in the program and, yes, there was an entry at the end: "Charles Babbage Prize for Best Project: Andrew Walker". But wait ... I was registered as Andrew Eric Walker. Was there another Andrew Walker? I ended up rushing back to registration, where they confirmed it by the simple expedient of scanning the list and finding that there were no other Andrew Walkers graduating. Apparently it was me after all, then ... whoah.
The ceremony itself was fairly similar to the one in Dundee a few days before: the various faculty members walked in accompanied by organ music (because of my elevated position, I could see the organist, which was awesome: the pieces he was playing had foot-pedal parts which were much faster and more complex than I had imagined) and garbed in a variety of gowns and hats from their home institutions ranging from restrained to mildly ridiculous. The Principal, Andrew Hamnett, gave an opening speech (including interesting details on the symbolism of the ceremony: apparently the silver mace carried in by the Bedellus at the head of the procession symbolises the presence of the Sovereign and thus the Royal Charter that enables the University to award degrees.) One honorary degree was awarded, to Colin Smith - again, a speech was made by the Engineering faculty head, rather than by the recipient of the degree; I'm assuming this is a Scottish university peculiarity.
After that, the awarding of degrees began, with students walking on stage as graduands, kneeling on a kneeling stool in front of the Principal, being congratulated and having their hand shaken, being ceremonially capped (with an actual flat cap this time, instead of a rolled-up something), proceeding along the stage to receive a certificate from the secretary and to have their hood placed around their neck by the Bedellus, then walking offstage as official graduates. It took quite a while for my turn to come, and when it did, it was over incredibly fast.
At the close of the ceremony, the Principal gave another speech, thanking the faculty and the parents, and exhorting students to take up their roles as guardians of knowledge and of civilised society, to always maintain their integrity and to be true to themselves even in the face of untenable odds. Finally, the silver mace was removed from its ceremonial position, and the ceremony was declared closed. The faculty proceeded down the aisle and out of the hall, followed by a column of new graduates, spilling out into the fresh air outside in a sea of black and blue gowns and yellow-lined hoods. In principle, there was to be a procession up to the Lord Todd building for refreshments and to join those who had been unable to attend and had been watching over a video link; it was more of a very gentle uphill bias to the Brownian motion of a crowd in which everyone seemed to be either looking for relatives or trying to find a large enough space to take photos.
I still hadn't got my official photo, so after congratulating and being congratulated, chatting to Mishi for a few seconds before she scooted off to find her grandparents, finding my own parents, bumping into Steph so many times that my Mum eventually decided that we needed to pose for a photo together, quickly passing through the packed reception hall in the Lord Todd and snagging a glass of Buck's Fizz on the way past, we headed back to the University Centre for photographs. I'd only ordered a standard photo, but Mum disappeared for a few minutes while I was in the photography queue, and reappeared with a receipt in hand - she'd bought an extra family photograph to go with it. The photography was less speedy than Dundee, but with more attention to detail, with the photographers (by chance, all female) making sure everyone's costume was perfect. I was handed a 'certificate' in the form of a piece of PVC tubing with a ribbon round it, and with a screw in the back which was used to hold the costume's hood firmly in place (the hoods have a buttonhole which hooks onto one's shirt, but this tends to pull the shirt up, allowing the hoods to slip out of place), carefully posed, and photographed both with and without my parents.
After I'd handed back my gown and hood, we headed over to the Livingstone Tower for a CIS reception. Unfortunately the CES graduates had their own reception to go to in the EEE department, so I never got to catch up with Mishi, Gillian, Jake or Gary. I hadn't been intending to go to the CIS reception myself, until I bumped into a few people at the Lord Todd reception and discovered that they were going. It turned out to be much busier than I'd expected - the Level 10 open-plan area was absolutely packed with people. I grabbed a glass of sparkling wine and proceeded to mingle, introducing my parents to my project supervisor Alex Coddington, and to Duncan Smeed. We got a photo, and I had the chance to thank Duncan for being generally awesome.
I also found out a little more about the Babbage Prize: apparently my project had very narrowly beaten out several others for the prize. I'm still rather surprised that I was awarded it, given the competition in the form of Morgan Harvey's Salut project (which began as a simple Strathclyde Alumni tracker, and blossomed into a full-featured social networking site with some really rather nice web design) and various other excellent projects.
I left my parents conversing with Alex, while Maria Fox grabbed me to talk about the possiblity of a PhD - there is some work being done on bipedal robotics and computational orthotics which I find rather interesting, so I'm seriously considering putting together a proposal. Finally, after attempting to depart several times and repeatedly bumping into more people I wanted to talk to, we got out of the building and I met Paul Goldfinch on his way in, and stopped to introduce my parents, to thank him for helping me so much when I had to change course, and to talk further about the concept of doing a PhD - his advice was that to go for it now, rather than later, if I were truly serious about doing it.
Finally, we managed to make it to the car and home. A quick change later (out of the hot suit and stiff new shoes into jeans and t-shirt - whew!) and we dashed off to the Manor Garden in Baljafferay for an absolutely awesome Chinese meal - their salt and pepper fried squid is seriously divine, and I need to find out how to cook squid like that. Came home at 9pm, took off my shoes, fell into bed fully clothed and fell fast asleep, totally exhausted.
I woke up at noon today, and I've spent the day vegetating, recovering from the madness and general awesomeness and realising that it really is officially All Over. Now I need to figure out what I'm doing next...
I woke up in Dundee at 6:45am (after finally getting to sleep around 4am), jumped on a bus into town, changed buses onto the Megabus to Glasgow, and finally arrived in Glasgow at 10:45. Grabbed my tickets from Registry, and was told that I had to be seated by 2:30pm. That was all fine - I had plenty of time to take the train home, grab a bite to eat, and get all smartened up for the ceremony.
So, I got home, had a chat with Mum, checked out my suit, attempted (not very successfully) to convince my hair to resemble anything but a curly haystack, then settled down to wait for everyone else to get ready. 'Everyone else' consisted of Mum and Dad - my sister was busy teaching at Camp America, and Nate was still in Dundee. I'd phoned up to find out whether I'd got any extra tickets (since I had been in Dundee and thus unable to pick up my tickets in person) and had been told that nobody had got extra tickets and I only had the two guest tickets that came as standard; extra guests were invited to watch via video link, but faced with being stuck in a video room filled with people he didn't know halfway across campus, then having to head straight back up to Dundee afterwards, Nate elected to stay up north.
It was around this point that I noticed, buried in the middle of the ceremony booklet, that I was actually meant to turn up at least an hour before the ceremony, and was meant to be in posession of my gown before that; as well as that, gown collection was from the University Centre near the union, all the way across campus from the actual ceremony. Luckily, my parents were ready, so we jumped into the car and headed off.
Halfway down the road, I realised that in my haste, I'd forgotten the receipt I'd been sent by Ede and Ravenscroft. We had to turn back and hurry home, grab the receipt, and drive back as fast as possible through steadily increasing traffic. I started to panic as the clock passed 2:00pm - the time by which I was meant to have registered.
I jumped out of the car on Cathedral Street, legged it to the University Centre opposite the Union, and picked my gown. It turned out that I didn't even have the necessary receipt for that: I'd picked up the photography receipt, but gown hire was done under a separate confirmation number which had come in my email. Of course, with my laptop dead for the last week, I hadn't been able to check my email, so I hadn't even realised. Luckily, the woman from Ede and Ravenscroft had a list of order numbers and verified my name from the photography receipt, so I grabbed the gown and started half-running across the campus to the Barony Hall.
As I went, I noticed I was passing quite a lot of other students in gowns. None of them seemed to be in a hurry. After finding the hall (every time I go to it I seem to take a completely different route) and finding the entrance to the room in which registry was being held (I didn't even know the Barony had a side entrance, let alone an entire complex of rooms off the main hall) I threw on my gown and stood in the queue to sign the graduation registry, taking the opportunity to catch my breath.
It didn't take long to register, and I noticed plenty of people arriving after me. Nobody even mentioned the 'arrive at least an hour early' thing. I received a leaflet which repeated the order of events set out in the ticket pack booklet (handily: I'd given the booklet to my parents because of the map of campus on the back) and which had my seat number on it. An organiser pointed me to my seat, and before the ceremony started, the Alumni Department head gave us a short talk about the ceremony and how to hold our hoods before encouraging us to keep in touch after graduating. The organisation in the hall was a pleasant surprise after the lack of communication leading up to the event - I didn't even know about signing up for graduation until our head of year sent a link to the graduation website in an email, and details of tickets, gown pickup, times etc were only made available five days before the ceremony.
Unfortunately, everyone from my old CES degree was seated in rows H and I, and I was in row J - nominally behind them, but row I was the last row in their area, and J was upstairs. I only got to talk to people for a few seconds before heading off. Confusingly, people were congratulating me on winning a prize... nobody had told me anything about a prize! I checked in the program and, yes, there was an entry at the end: "Charles Babbage Prize for Best Project: Andrew Walker". But wait ... I was registered as Andrew Eric Walker. Was there another Andrew Walker? I ended up rushing back to registration, where they confirmed it by the simple expedient of scanning the list and finding that there were no other Andrew Walkers graduating. Apparently it was me after all, then ... whoah.
The ceremony itself was fairly similar to the one in Dundee a few days before: the various faculty members walked in accompanied by organ music (because of my elevated position, I could see the organist, which was awesome: the pieces he was playing had foot-pedal parts which were much faster and more complex than I had imagined) and garbed in a variety of gowns and hats from their home institutions ranging from restrained to mildly ridiculous. The Principal, Andrew Hamnett, gave an opening speech (including interesting details on the symbolism of the ceremony: apparently the silver mace carried in by the Bedellus at the head of the procession symbolises the presence of the Sovereign and thus the Royal Charter that enables the University to award degrees.) One honorary degree was awarded, to Colin Smith - again, a speech was made by the Engineering faculty head, rather than by the recipient of the degree; I'm assuming this is a Scottish university peculiarity.
After that, the awarding of degrees began, with students walking on stage as graduands, kneeling on a kneeling stool in front of the Principal, being congratulated and having their hand shaken, being ceremonially capped (with an actual flat cap this time, instead of a rolled-up something), proceeding along the stage to receive a certificate from the secretary and to have their hood placed around their neck by the Bedellus, then walking offstage as official graduates. It took quite a while for my turn to come, and when it did, it was over incredibly fast.
At the close of the ceremony, the Principal gave another speech, thanking the faculty and the parents, and exhorting students to take up their roles as guardians of knowledge and of civilised society, to always maintain their integrity and to be true to themselves even in the face of untenable odds. Finally, the silver mace was removed from its ceremonial position, and the ceremony was declared closed. The faculty proceeded down the aisle and out of the hall, followed by a column of new graduates, spilling out into the fresh air outside in a sea of black and blue gowns and yellow-lined hoods. In principle, there was to be a procession up to the Lord Todd building for refreshments and to join those who had been unable to attend and had been watching over a video link; it was more of a very gentle uphill bias to the Brownian motion of a crowd in which everyone seemed to be either looking for relatives or trying to find a large enough space to take photos.
I still hadn't got my official photo, so after congratulating and being congratulated, chatting to Mishi for a few seconds before she scooted off to find her grandparents, finding my own parents, bumping into Steph so many times that my Mum eventually decided that we needed to pose for a photo together, quickly passing through the packed reception hall in the Lord Todd and snagging a glass of Buck's Fizz on the way past, we headed back to the University Centre for photographs. I'd only ordered a standard photo, but Mum disappeared for a few minutes while I was in the photography queue, and reappeared with a receipt in hand - she'd bought an extra family photograph to go with it. The photography was less speedy than Dundee, but with more attention to detail, with the photographers (by chance, all female) making sure everyone's costume was perfect. I was handed a 'certificate' in the form of a piece of PVC tubing with a ribbon round it, and with a screw in the back which was used to hold the costume's hood firmly in place (the hoods have a buttonhole which hooks onto one's shirt, but this tends to pull the shirt up, allowing the hoods to slip out of place), carefully posed, and photographed both with and without my parents.
After I'd handed back my gown and hood, we headed over to the Livingstone Tower for a CIS reception. Unfortunately the CES graduates had their own reception to go to in the EEE department, so I never got to catch up with Mishi, Gillian, Jake or Gary. I hadn't been intending to go to the CIS reception myself, until I bumped into a few people at the Lord Todd reception and discovered that they were going. It turned out to be much busier than I'd expected - the Level 10 open-plan area was absolutely packed with people. I grabbed a glass of sparkling wine and proceeded to mingle, introducing my parents to my project supervisor Alex Coddington, and to Duncan Smeed. We got a photo, and I had the chance to thank Duncan for being generally awesome.
I also found out a little more about the Babbage Prize: apparently my project had very narrowly beaten out several others for the prize. I'm still rather surprised that I was awarded it, given the competition in the form of Morgan Harvey's Salut project (which began as a simple Strathclyde Alumni tracker, and blossomed into a full-featured social networking site with some really rather nice web design) and various other excellent projects.
I left my parents conversing with Alex, while Maria Fox grabbed me to talk about the possiblity of a PhD - there is some work being done on bipedal robotics and computational orthotics which I find rather interesting, so I'm seriously considering putting together a proposal. Finally, after attempting to depart several times and repeatedly bumping into more people I wanted to talk to, we got out of the building and I met Paul Goldfinch on his way in, and stopped to introduce my parents, to thank him for helping me so much when I had to change course, and to talk further about the concept of doing a PhD - his advice was that to go for it now, rather than later, if I were truly serious about doing it.
Finally, we managed to make it to the car and home. A quick change later (out of the hot suit and stiff new shoes into jeans and t-shirt - whew!) and we dashed off to the Manor Garden in Baljafferay for an absolutely awesome Chinese meal - their salt and pepper fried squid is seriously divine, and I need to find out how to cook squid like that. Came home at 9pm, took off my shoes, fell into bed fully clothed and fell fast asleep, totally exhausted.
I woke up at noon today, and I've spent the day vegetating, recovering from the madness and general awesomeness and realising that it really is officially All Over. Now I need to figure out what I'm doing next...