Here comes another long one… my weekend. I went down to Southern California for a variety of reasons which will become apparent as the weekend unfolds in this entry.
I could start at Friday night, with Friday Night Magic, but that was a typical Friday. The fun really began Saturday morning at 9am.
Waking up at 9am is sort of early for me, but bearable. But having to wake myself up, “pack” (I only had to bring enough clothes for one night and my toiletries), and get to the airport. Of course, I forgot I had to get gas first, so by the time I got to the airport, I was running late enough that I didn’t want to risk missing my flight and parked in short term parking instead of long term parking. It was only going to be for about 30 hours so it wouldn’t be that bad. I am one of the last to check in, but I make it before the 5 minute rule (yay Southwest).
On the flight I try to play some GBA Castlevania, but the amount of time that you get on the 50 minute flight that isn’t ascent or decent and they aren’t serving drinks is about 15 minutes, so I didn’t get much in. That, and the whole light issue made it hard to play. Also, I felt very weird, as the young woman who was sitting next to me was sobbing uncontrollably (and unapproachably) for most of the flight. I never found out why, but it did cause me to think quite a bit about it. I had another one of those “weird intersections in people’s lives” moment. But of course it didn’t last long, because we landed in Ontario before too long. About the time that they said that we could turn on our cell phones when we had reached the gate, I realized that I had left mine on the whole trip. Oops. I’m glad I didn’t make the airplane crash or something.
My mom and step-dad picked me up, and we didn’t go straight home, instead we went to my uncle’s, for a dual-birthday celebration (his and my step-dads… mostly his) but we were early, and about the time the other guests got there we had to leave, stopped by home briefly, changed, and headed out to UC Riverside for commencement ceremonies.
We got to UCR at about 4pm for the ceremony that was going to start at 6pm. Of course, we were practically the first people there, and it was outdoors and the temperature was near, if not over, 100 degrees. I was really wishing that I had brought my GBA, as there was plenty of light where I was right then. (At least I was wearing sun block… I’m still peeling on my arms from the Memorial Day BBQ… sheesh) After a little bit, the rest of our group gets there. The person who was graduating (getting her Doctorate in Education, actually) was the long-time friend of my mom’s that she’s known since college, so it was her family and us and a few of her friends all sitting in the little scrap of shade on the edge of the seats in the now-bearable-heat for the next hour and a half. To give them credit, they started right on time. Unfortunately, this graduation was fully a quarter of the school, the departments of Education and Business. First they did all the keynote speaking and student speaking and national anthem and all that. Then they began giving out degrees, first the Doctorates… yay! Then… the MBAs… then the Education Certifications… then… the ~1000 Business Administration majors. At least it seemed like there were a thousand of them… the number probably isn’t too far off. It finally finished at 9pm.
The thing that bugged us wasn’t the heat, or the length (although those were quite annoying) but instead it was the demeanor of the B.S. candidates. Where the grad students were sitting calmly, the undergrads were not paying attention to anything that was going on, completely ignored the speakers and the anthem, and were constantly on their cell phones. Even as they were walking up to get their “diplomas” they were on the phone, waving to some other person in the crowd. And, to make things worse, as the day/night wore on, they began to leave. Right out of their own graduation, before they’d even been conferred degrees, turned their tassels, listened to the closing remarks… anything. By the time the ceremony was done the undergrad section of the seats was practically empty. There was just no respect there.
But that was over, and it was time for dinner. We went to a very nice Spanish place in Riverside, didn’t finish dinner until midnight, got home at 1am, and went to sleep… only to face Sunday a few short hours later.
But I think I’m going to lunch before I write about yesterday.
No respect at all!
At least at my high school they had the decency to stick around and throw beach balls around at each other during the ceremony.
I guess that’s why I never went to my own graduation; sitting in the orchestra for the first three years kinda turned me off to the idea.