head in the clouds

Graduation Bits and Pieces

"Bruised and battered" as the Commencement speaker puts it, I finally got that piece of paper! (otherwise known as my diploma)

The ordeal started at 7.30 in the morning. Naturally the batteries in my ananlog camera died the night before, hence the limited selection of fuzzy digicam pics.

Love Erich Caulfield, the Grad Student Prez's speech. V. MIT geek-thespian chic, complete with onomatopoeia:

Culminating at this time, at this place, at this junction in the space-time continuum with you, and this august and awe-inspiring assembly of the academically accomplished...

When I take time to consider the significance of this moment, I am compelled to ponder the proclamations of the poet who confessed, "I'm tired of sailing my little boat, far inside the harbor bar, I want to go out where the big ships float, on the deep where the great ones are. And should my frail craft prove too slight, for the waves that sweep those billows o'er, I'd rather go down in a stirring fight than drowse to death by the sheltered shore."

In the purest sense, the poet captures the essence of this experience exactly. For whether you've been here for one year, or two years, or three years, or n years or n+1 years,(everyone claps ;D) in a career that will last nearly a half-century, your greatest deeds have yet to be done.

Now, as you prepare to set sail for the great world outside of MIT, it is my hope that triumph will be your ever-present companion. May passion fuel your every endeavor. May innovation infect your every invention. And may a preternatural propensity for progress pepper your every project. And may a blaze and torch of morality light your path...

...Go ye forth, gentle geniuses. History is waiting to hear from you.

Fellow classmate Cameron Bass (obscured) sports a plastic lawn goose atop his head, wearing his mortarboard; other people had penguins, beavers and the like. I had Anpanman's pouffy face on my cap. [via MIT News Office]