Beginnings and Endings

Commencement this week, referring of course to the enormous ceremony that marks the end of the school year and the official conferral of degrees. I was eligible to take part since I had earned my MA, awarded sequentially on the way to the PhD, in February. These things are probably more exciting for the proud parents than the students themselves (though with undergraduate education at Columbia costing around $55,000 per year, both are surely entitled to a bit of ceremony), and Dad was here to see it all happen. It was, funnily enough, my first graduation ceremony of any kind; we don't have high school graduation in the UK, and I took my BA in absentia, though the Oxford MA ceremony will come later this summer. I suppose seeing how they do it on this side of the pond serves as a point of reference.

Each of Columbia's 19 schools has its own separate ceremony, followed the day after by a university-wide Commencement. Attire is of course cap and gown, a (to my mind) somewhat odd light blue colour, those being the colours of the University. It's different for BA, MA and PhD - as you can see in the photos, the PhD is much more luxurious, though hopefully in a few years I'll be wearing one of those myself. The Convocation, for the GSAS, was on Tuesday and held indoors in one of the University's auditoria. It took about 90 minutes, during which time we were photographed in front of the American flag and while shaking hands with the Dean, after being subjected to a couple of fairly mediocre speeches from the assorted faculty and one wide-eyed Iranian graduating student, whose address, though well-delivered, verged rather too much on being a polemic for the occasion. Wonder what the folks back home'll make of his shot in front of Ol' Glory?

The big one, though, is Commencement. As you can see from the photos, this one is held in the main quad of the University campus, and while I couldn't really see from my position, they welcomed something in the region of 25-30,000 people that day. The atmosphere was perhaps best described as a cross between a graduation and the Last Night of the Proms; an occasion for celebration, not for sombre ceremony as I fear we may get at Oxford, most notably for the Columbia College graduates (i.e., undergrads) for whom it represented the culmination of four years of varying degrees of application.

The main speaker was University President Lee C. Bollinger, whose address struck roughly the right note for the occasion - light-hearted, with a certain degree of the patriarch's advice to his charges about it. Honorary degrees were awarded, the Dean of each school requested the President to formally award the degrees, which - by the power vested in him - he did, and that, after about three hours, was that. We filed out to Frank Sinatra's New York, New York, not least because, as Bollinger said, "if you can make it here, you'll make it anywhere".

All good clean fun, though sitting out in the sun for that length of time with temperatures touching 30℃ was not the most pleasant of experiences. At least it didn't rain like it did last year.

In other news, I have my TA marching orders for next year. I'll be teaching East Asian V2361 Intro East Asian Civ: Japan, which is a survey lecture course on more or less the whole of Japanese history. I'm delighted by this appointment; although it's probably a bit more work than some of the other courses, it's ground I'm very familiar with, and the senior Professor, David Lurie, is a great guy - he's one of the younger faculty members here and his kanbun class was enormous fun this past semester. So basically, I have to mark papers, lecture a couple of times, and hold discussion section for two groups of fifteen students once each per week. I have no doubt it'll be very hard work, but this is rather what I signed up for, so I'm definitely up for it.

In other news, for reasons related to applying for scholarships for Autumn 2008 to go to Japan, it looks like I'll have to cross the Atlantic at least twice this summer. Nice to get to spend some time in Blighty, of course, but given my druthers I'd rather do it in just one swing than have to shuttle back and forth...