Well, here's what happened.
Folks entered a baseball field next to the football stadium single-file in long line. We'd bought tickets, of course. No one checked our tickets. Could've just put on a grad robe and walked on in. The students around me are complaining about being hungover and exhausted from turning in last nights' papers. I know no one. I seem to be surrounded by political science majors, and I find out that it IS true that about 50% of Berkeley students participate in Greek life. I never would have thought it was true! But it is true. I'm surrounded by people with nice hair.
Now, traditionally the way it works at fancy private universities is that all the professors from a particular department are decked out in academic regalia from their PhDs, and then they lead in all the students from their majors. It's like this big thing with a bunch of fanfare, and different schools get to represent themselves, and you say goodbye to all your professors and it's all sad. Not so. At UC Berkeley, you go find a cluster of balloons, get a sticker the same color as that cluster, and that's the group you're walking on with. This detail will be important later. For now, just understand that we have 3900 students trying to follow eight different balloon clusters to their eventual seats, through choke points that are about 10-20 feet wide. Chaos. Kids are packed shoulder to shoulder. All you can see from your 5'3" vantage point is a sea of black hats and occasionally someone tries to start a school cheer, but it dies quickly. It's roasting and the 10 PhD students who decided to come to general commencement look ashamed of themselves.
So, line moving as slow as molasses for about an hour, we end up in a tunnel that goes from the practice field to the stadium. Still packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Sea of black acetate garments. Folks are starting to feel finicky, and commencement hasn't even started yet.
Cal band greets us. Nice.
When we finally get to sit down, things aren't so bad! Or so we think. Hey, get this--there's a FREE bottle of water under every chair, so folks take a bit of spirit, little happy noises abound. Someone tries to lead our parents in a cheer. They don't understand the idea of being separated into three groups and standing up to shout "C," "A," or "L" depending on where they're sitting. We're all suddenly unsure of our own intellects given the performance of our genetic predecessors. The Vice-Chancellor gives a speech met with lukewarm enthusiasm (though a young man who managed to smuggle in a vuvuzela pipes off a blast on it every time he says something particularly charming), a "young alumni" speaker comes up and gives a nice talk about perseverance in the current economy and not giving up even though things admittedly suck, and then...
Up comes The Woz and Only. This is literally how he is announced. The Woz and Only Steve Wozniak. He says something about how he is going to give a bad speech because he and his wife are mathematical types. For example, his hotel room is number 409, which has two squares (the only non-idempotent squares that can be written with a single digit, in fact!), so he and she felt good about that. This must be the most autistic man to ever speak at anyone's commencement. He rambles and rambles through a bunch of anecdotes with absolutely no logical connection between them. Something about developing an equation h = s - f, meaning "happiness equals smiles minus frowns." My entire row starts chuckling embarrassedly and exchanging worried looks. He amends that to h = f3--for food, friends, and fun, though he admits that perhaps there should be another f in there.
No one has any idea where he's going, because one minute he's talking about how you have to keep going despite all odds and the next minute he's talking about how he thinks that AI is going to be a thing and we need to make the interface on technology as simple as possible so that humans can use computers without having to think too hard and the humans will feel good about it. He actually says "humans." Everyone is seeing the writing on the wall by this point, but they're willing to give The Woz and Only a pass. He's sort of adorable in his social ineptitude.
Not so much for the University medalist, an 18-year-old with a dual degree in chemical engineering and chemical biology, plus a minor in creative writing, plus he started an undergraduate journal, plus he's writing a book, plus he started a nonprofit, plus he has a 3.99 over 200 units compiled in three years, plus fuck knows what else. He starts off by saying that he's as "enthusiastic to lead commencement as he is unqualified," and people are ... not happy. The speech is frankly terrible. It's peppered with quotes from famous actors and he speaks in a slow, loud cadence with inappropriate pauses and emphases. It's clear that he has no understanding of other folks' circumstances. When he lifts up his medal to show it to the camera, he drops it and the 3899 other students laugh unpleasantly. "Wonderful, wonderful," says the Vice-Chancellor as we all sneer.
In-between these two folks a professor gets an award and gives a speech, but I didn't mention her previously because folks started standing up, milling about, taking pictures of themselves and, in the case of that one dude, tooting on his vuvuzela.
He continues through the subsequent two performances. A mostly white "African music performance group" seems to be trying and failing to get the crowd to sing along to an unknown tune with strange lyrics. Toot toot toot. The University Gospel Chorus leads the crowd in singing about Berkeley values, in a song written based on written-in responses. It goes something like this:
We take what we know
So we can learn what we don't
With passion
We learn all we can
(toot toot toot)
No one knows the tune, possibly because there isn't one. Two or three young men in the back attempt to dance along half-heartedly. Doesn't work too well.
Finally, we actually get to commencement. Woz on one side of the stage! The university chancellor on the other, shakin' hands! We're supposed to get up when our row is asked to rise, and we'll be going in blocks of assigned colors. Only problem is that we don't know a damn thing about who is supposed to be telling us what, so if a group close to us stands up then we get up, too. Within 10 minutes all 3900 graduates are standing on the astroturf, packed chest-to-back and roasting. A message over the loudspeaker exhorts those who have finished walking to go sit back down. A harried lady with an earpiece says that those of us standing and not in the "orange" color group might consider sitting back down if we wanted to, because we'll be standing for over an hour and all our names will be called whether we stand up or sit down. Ha. She still thinks that someone cares about the balloons and stickers. There's only one group, and it's coded black.
Folks are taking selfies with The Woz, who apparently has previously unknown talent in this area. There are mutterings that whoever organized this should "have a performance review before being reconsidered for the fall semester." The cards on which we wrote pronunciations for our names are not working, as the readers stumble over names like "Christopher" and "Chang." I compute that if they take one second per name, we should be out of here in an hour and five minutes. Only problem is that they aren't taking a second per name, because apparently the announcers have peat instead of gray matter between their ears, and so I generously raise it to an hour and a half.
Folks around me are saying they're glad they ran into "the math major." That's me, the one and only.
Okay, so fast forward about an hour. There is no line. No one is pretending that stickers or balloons matter anymore, or that sitting back down is going to happen. There are just two enormous clumps of black-clad bodies on each side of the stage, flanking the rows of white plastic folding chairs. Folks are on their cell phones calling their parents, asking if they can leave. The official photographer has given up. The Woz has sat down, apparently suffering from heat exhaustion and growing progressively more pink, and a no-name administrator is shaking hands and grimacing politely at the graduates of 2013. The folks around me are fomenting revolution in the form of demanding the Woz back. Like all the other chants, it's quiet and pretty much stillborn. The Woz doesn't come back.
However, the hassled lady with the earpiece comes round again, saying that we can do whatever we want but we could line up in the endzones instead of a mob. If we felt like it. It was an option. "Would you like us to go line up?" I ask her, apparently having lost my ability to interpret social cues along with any structural integrity--my back had given out about two hours ago.
"You're such a good person," she says.
I try to get the one other person I know to leave "the mob," but when he doesn't I just walk over by myself and wait in the end zone. People are really leaving now, without having even walked. The girls have taken off their heels. Most of the parents are gone. The act of graduation has become a grim business. There is no pushing or shoving, only glassy-eyed stares and vague determination. We have suffered four years for this. We will keep on going. Water cart comes round. Woz is back. The hassled lady with the earpiece is back. She tells us that we could, perhaps, if we didn't have our hearts set on meeting The Woz, go off to the other side where the line is really short and things will be faster. No one budges. We want The Woz.
I smile at her and greet her politely, and she says: "Oh, you're the one who left the mob to come join this line! The only one in this entire graduation who cared about being fair and not cutting ahead of your friends! You're the only good person here!" She doesn't seem like she's being sarcastic. I wonder why the basis of her morals are so line-oriented.
The other students snarl at her and at me. In the interim, the Woz sits back down. Back to the grimacing unnamed administrator. The Vice-Chancellor, on the other side, has been going strong smiling and shaking hands for three hours now. He's made of fucking iron and doesn't seem to be flagging. I, and the people around me, make vague noises of pride and respect. He is our hero. Old man with white hair won't quit. And neither will we. We're gonna walk. This is our goddamn graduation and we're gonna finish.
We do walk. My name is mangled. I am grimaced at. I sprawl out across three of the available 3870 seats, and the unflappable Vice-Chancellor gives closing remarks, calls in a choir, and the fifty or so still on the field--10 choir, 20 administrators, 20 graduates--belt out the University of California Berkeley theme song. After we're done singing quietly to our meager remaining audience, the administrators walk down the center aisle, one holding a funky stick with a bear on top. The twenty of us remaining clap for Old Ironheart. The Woz looks hassled and like he never wants to take another selfie with a sorority girl. His security guard looks braindead. Soon enough, they're gone.
I go find my parents, then walk back alone into the exact middle of those 3900 chairs. I remove my cap, and throw it in the air.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 15802736 times)