I recently had the pleasure of attending a formal university graduation ceremony. It had the whole deal, robe wearing ushers, a giant hall, a giant organ, a fanfare procession of toffed up pompous goits, a musical interlude and a long assed speech that nobody wanted to hear.

My mind was distracted away from most of the proceedings as I was certain I had just walked in on a Harry Potter movie. I proceeded to reference everything happening at the assembly to goings on in the Harry Potter movies. The ushers were wearing long maroon robes, so they were obviously gryffindor. The Chancellor sat in the big chair and was the important guy so he was Professor Dumbledore. There was even Colin the 1st year taking photos of everybody.

I think the reason that the whole thing felt like a fantasy world was the tradition. There was a booklet to read which explained why there was a big mace and the coat of arms and whatnot but I was looking for an explanation of a different kind.

I wanted an explanation as to why university staff feel the need to ponce around in a poofy get-up asserting their wisdom.. but more so authority. People watched on waiting for them to get their boring wrinkled asses off the microphone so they could see their son or daughter on stage and take a happy snap to celebrate the tens of thousands of dollars they most probably put towards it.

I sat befuddled and quiet in my seat hopelessly trying to stop my ass from going numb and fighting off the urge to tell the person next to me that my ass needed CPR (mouth to bum resuscitation).

Whilst doing all that I also had an itch to point it out to these poofy hat wearers that not more than a few thousand years ago, their very ancestors wore animal skins and grunted their language. The ate with their hands and ran around humping each other. You may just put it all down to progress, but not me.

They walk into a room in the correct order playing their fanfare music and
holing their gold implements in a way that seems to make me think they are trying pretend they don't have to take a shit like the rest of us. I like think that wisest man on their faculty was sitting up the back as equally disgusted in the formalities as I was... and chose not to be a part of it.

It was also quite obviously a giant money making scheme. The robes wore $165, the many varieties of photo packs were up to $70 and you could order a video of the whole mindnumblingly boring experience for not less than $75 dollars.

Overall, I feel the most empathy for the graduates who had to pay a fortune to find the bullshit ceremony as their light at the end of the tunnel. It's a shame people's egos and traditions (which came from the church mostly anyway) had to dominate a celebration of peoples achievements.

In conclusion, the ceremony was as interesting as a foreign movie with missing subtitles. But that's life.

Comments? Email me