[Leica] OT, but joyful: saloon keeper's daughter graduates

[don.dory at gmail.com (Don Dory)]

A very good time for you and your family.  Much to be proud of in the sense
of appreciation for hard dedicated work paying off in the intangible (a
diploma representing education) and the tangible educated, talented no
longer child truly starting out in another world.

Plus I will have similar news this Saturday when my daughter struts down the
diploma mill runway.

On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 3:39 PM, Brian Reid <reid at 
mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>wrote:

> Day before yesterday I was part of an intimate little crowd of 11,000
> people who sat in plastic folding chairs under constant threat of rain next
> to the Charles River while about 2000 people were conferred with degrees at
> MIT. My youngest child, Elizabeth, who is a member of the LUG but has been
> too busy being a student to participate much this year, was awarded a
> Master's in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Her cap was
> attached to her hair with so many bobby pins that she needed her sister's
> help to get it off her head afterwards. (Last year at her BS graduation, 
> the
> wind blew her cap off just as the official photographer snapped the 
> official
> picture).
>
> I only got to the ceremony 2 hours before it started, so I was seated so
> far back that I couldn't see the stage. I did manage to get off a 
> photograph
> of the Jumbotron video screen while it was showing a smiling Elizabeth, but
> I forgot that Jumbotrons are interlaced and set the shutter speed too high,
> so the picture is a little odd. But she showed me the diploma afterwards as
> proof that she really was up there when they called out her name.
>
> Elizabeth's sister (Vanessa) and I did some stopwatch work during the
> graduation ceremony, and we determined that they were reading the names of,
> and finding diplomas for, and sending across the stage, 32 graduates per
> minute. If you are not astonished by that number, why don't you find a list
> of 32 names from 20 countries and try reading them out loud and see how 
> long
> it takes you.  At least 2 of the test names must have more than 12
> syllables. You get no credit unless you pronounce them all correctly.
> Rehearsing is permitted.
>
> I didn't get any pictures because I didn't really want pictures of the
> backs of the heads of other students' parents, and I was there to jubilate
> and not to photograph. So I bought package C-7 from the official event
> photographer, which will include a TIFF with right to print for family use.
>
> She's not flying home with me today because she's got a wedding to shoot
> next weekend here in Boston; then she'll fly home, soon to start an actual
> job in Cupertino, California.
>
> Thanks for listening. I'll probably stop smiling in a few weeks, but next
> year Elizabeth's sister will graduate from law school and I get to do it
> again.
>
>
>
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>



-- 
Don
don.dory at gmail.com