Sunday, May 21st I officially and publicly ended my undergrad career! Although I couldn't see mom, dad, grandma, Leah, Mark, or my friend, Angelica anywhere within the 13 thousand people in the arena, and I know they couldn't find me within the over 2600 graduates seated there, I knew they were proud and so was I. Done. I'm done.

I'm sure if you ask any attendants of the 2000 UAlbany graduation they would spout annoyances and surprised disappointments at the room of black caps and gowns. The day was supposed to be for our parents- "congratulations, you got us through this," but it ended up being completely student conquered! To begin with, when we were finally all seated and the platform party was introduced, our University President got boo-ed! I can't say I was a boo-er, mostly because boo-ing is not a practice I support in general, but I also can't say I hold their sentiment in contempt. Suffice to say that the past year has been full of controversy on the campus and President Hitchcock (aka Bitchcock on campus *sigh*) hasn't done much to calm the turmoil among student activists. She may not have had the power to meet demands, but she could have had the decency to address the concerned students and say, "I can't help you but you can talk to this person or this office, or you can try to do this." She avoided it all and enabled the resentment.

For the most part, the only portion of the ceremony that retained respect for those on the platform were when the class president spoke, and when exceptional students were introduced and presented with diplomas. The recognition part for the rest of us was short and anti-climactic. We were announced by group, and my group was composed of the longest list of majors. It was the Humanities and Fine Arts list and began with Art, included about fourteen or fifteen majors, and ended with Women's Studies (my primary major). As they read the list, students from each of its majors stood to the cheers of their family and friends. The remained standing through the list of majors in their group, so by the time Women's Studies was called, I could barely hear them read it and I knew nobody could see the few of us stand. Then we sat and the next group was called.

Our speaker was faculty member, John Delano. It was bad. It may have been the fact that there were over 13,000 people in front of him, but he sounded as if he had barely practiced the speech. The use of his Power Point presentation could have been helpful and exciting but was neither, it was mostly dull. In fact the speech itself was barely cohesive and seemed to have very little to do with us.
And the graduates retaliated.
All of a sudden and in the middle of a speech, a loud cheer started in the back of the room and quickly made its way up to the front. Everyone near me (in the front section) spun around and strained to see the bright beach ball fly up in the air and get batted around the graduating class! "Wahoo!" "Yeah!" Everyone clapped and laughed until one of the ushers grabbed the disturbance and under a disappointed "Awwww", and soft boo-ing, dispensed of the interruption. The soon-to-be former students sullenly turned around and faced the speaker once again. Our patience had been transformed into that of five year olds. Nobody wanted to listen to the speeches; our collective attention had been stolen with the tease of bright colored beach balls!

The speech continued and we tittered amongst the people on either side of us until soon enough a resounding "Wahooooo!" announced the appearance of yet another beach ball! This was great! "Yeah!" "Woooooooo!" Organized Chaos reined until the ushers put a stop to the interlude once again and we all returned our attentions to the speaker. This continued intermittently through the entirety of the ceremony. I don't know how students got the beach balls in there, or blew them up once they were there, but nothing could have been better than the childish excitement of seeing beach balls fly into the air in the middle of thousands of monotonous robes.

I'm glad I attended the graduation ceremony. I wasn't going to originally because I had been told how impersonal it was and how lonely it could be with so many people you don't know. Maybe I was lucky to have found a friend who was important to me who I remained with through commencement. Perhaps I was even luckier to have had fellow Women's Studies majors and friends surrounding me during that hectic time. I had a memorable day. Done. I'm done with my undergraduate career. Thanks mom and dad!