You win the thread!
On the other hand, I just booked a hotel for my son’s graduation next May. My cell phone and tablet will be fully charged and I’ll have a paperback ready just in case we have an internet outage.
Picture this: a graduating class of 22 kids. You think to yourself “Great, we’ll be out of here in 45 minutes!”
Nope. First they walked in to P&C. Then we had several local businesses talk while handing out scholarships. Then a couple teachers talked and handed out certificates (sports/musicX2/art). Then there was all the Honor Society stuff. The 4-H stuff. Finally the kids were called 1 at a time up to say a few words. Then, if they were going to college and had any kind of scholarship awarded, that was announced “Jerry is going to AG College and has a $100 scholarship from Local Feed Store, a $200 scholarship from Local Farmer for writing an essay and on and on.” I swear it took longer than when I graduated from a class of ~400.
My oldest son didn’t go to college (until a year later) so he was 1 of 3 that didn’t have anything but his name said. Middle son was awarded wrestling/football certificates and it was also stated where he was going to college. For college graduation neither opted to do the Walk.
Youngest has another year to go in HS. So far he is not a joiner (other than the mandatory Band or Choir) and he hasn’t decided where to go for college or what he wants to be. But if he wants more than community college (like his brothers) or a tech college (like his dad) he had best start trying for scholarships. He’s had 5 colleges emailing and mailing him due to his ACT score.
There’s a reason why TED Talks are limited to 18 minutes.
Finally made it through, eh, Tom?
I asked my step daughter if she wanted me to attend her HS graduation, and she said “I don’t want to attend my graduation. Why would I ask anyone to sit through that?” I told her I was proud of her, and she said “That’s all I want.” She’s been in my life only a few years but I don’t know how I lived without her.
I remember that, during one graduation (I was also in band and saw a bunch of them), one of my fellow clarinetists fell asleep. She was in the youngest class, and no one bothered to wake her, because it was kinda cute.
The cool thing about being in band is that we were far enough away from any of the people who actually wanted to be there to watch that we could just talk with each other pretty easily, without it being obvious to anyone else. Anyone who actually was there to watch their family member or something usually got up and moved somewhere else for a better view of the stage.
Try being faculty and having to sit on the platform. No surreptitious texting or listening to an iPod, bright lights, fixed attentive smile.
My niece’s HS graduation wasn’t all that bad. Of course, I spent most of it outdoors treating my sister (her mom) for heat exhaustion and only went back in to see the big finale.
The damnable Christmas pageants during elementary school were brutal though. A couple songs for each grade wasn’t good enough for the music director. There were a couple smaller groupings of more gifted students. I don’t attend concerts of music I like. Just sitting and watching someone play music is low-grade pain. It was worse though. It was much, much worse. The music director had a hand chime fetish. Every grade except the first had a hand chime group to endure. Then there were two multigrade groups of joint hand chimes. Those got packed in between the grades singing making for a couple hour-long program. The dictionary definition of cacophony should include “second graders playing hand chimes.”
Hell, I hate them so much I skipped my graduation ceremonies from UGA, telling them to mail the diploma.
Elementary and Middle school talent shows were the things I hated with my kid. Holy hell, what’s the damned point?
I’ve been to 25 high school graduations, five college graduations, and one middle school graduation. Total: 30. Do I get a prize? 
If I hear “Hold onto your dreams” one more time, expect projectile vomiting.
Besides brevity, a benefit to limiting seats and asking parents to hold applause is that the kid who has only one family member there doesn’t feel bad. A drawback is that people applaud anyway, bursting with pride as they are. As this high school allowed applause, I made a point of clapping for each graduate, even those I never had in class. Luckily, it’s not that big a high school. I estimate I’ve applauded about 18,000 students across the stage. About 3700 of them were mine.
You know, it was tedious, but high school graduation may be the closest thing we’ve got to a (non-religious) right of passage in this country. That I got to be a part of so many is pretty cool, actually.
No, there isn’t. I sat through 30 of them. It was always a struggle to remember that it was a huge moment for the kids and their families after the first few. It became three mandatory hours of boredom standing between me and 10 weeks of vacation. They are all run together in my memory because they were all so much alike. I usually smothered laughter at the inevitable “We are the future” point in the valedictory speech. Boy howdy am I glad I retired from public education…
I went to my Brothers HS graduation many years ago. A top level state school (free). And it was excellent They had a short speech, they had musical numbers from students who were really good pro-level performers. Production values were tight. Everyone in the space could see and hear. Only a few students were individually named. The sold a record (disk) of the event, and people bought it (well, parents bought it).
I remember it as being slightly boring, and I still remember with approval the vocal trio.
So it /is/ possible, where people aren’t ignorant, stupid, and bound by ignorant stupid traditions.
Not like, I have to say, the HS graduations attended by my wife’s kids.
I understand why military handovers are boring to watch. The audience is the most senior officer present. The responsible officers are displaying their work. Men in ranks are the product, and civilians are seated at the rear, where they don’t get in the way.
The kids graduation ceremonies were operated on the same idea. The graduates were presented to the lord of the manor, in the hope that he would remember them, and speed them through life. A tradition handed down to Aus schools from the class-ridden English society of 100 years ago, that they take their que from. So each kid walks across the stage with their back to their parents, gets their certificate from the important guest, still with their backs to their parents, turns to look down the steps, and disappears from sight. You couldn’t design a more pointless exercise if you tried. The sound system doesn’t work properly, nobody is in the right place, long waits while the participants are marshaled, and general incompetence everywhere.
My university graduations weren’t as bad as that.
Yes, a university graduation from a religious school where you vehemently disagree with their theology.
I didn’t realize that everyone in the audience would carry on loud conversations the whole way through it so I couldn’t have heard anything had I wanted to. I don’t do crowds well, and noisy rude crowds make me want o bite my own ass.
One distinct memory from all those commencements: The valedictorian was doing her speech. The audience was noisy and rude just like every year. Her father, who was a local cop, completely lost his shit and bellowed at the audience to shut the hell up. There was stunned silence that lasted for a few moments. Then they all went back to talking, only now they were talking about him.
I was too! For three years in HS and a few in college. At least in college they gave us beer/gas money to get home. We used to play cards while the ceremony was going on, but god Pomp and Circumstance gets fricking boring the 10th time it gets played the same day.
The answer is that, yes, there are 11-ty billion things more grueling than sitting through a graduation. If someone you care about is graduating, you go, take pictures when appropriate, and congratulate them afterwards. We do these things for people we care about.
I’m going to one tonight but not dreading it. Sure, it can be tedious. But it’s also a chance for some prime girl watching and a chance to sit and relax, away from the news, television, and the internet for a couple hours.
Well, I teach at a Technical College. And my first year, a couple of decades ago, I sat through half a graduation.
You know what I figured out? If you show up beforehand, while the grads are milling about, and tell them how proud you are of them… then, you can sneak out and go get a refreshing beverage nearby. Where you can bump into the other teachers who are smart enough not to get their time and their souls sucked away.
Yep graduations blow. I got forced into my high school graduation and then guilt tripped into the college graduation and then my parents were surprised when I told them to fuck off for my masters ceremony. I did go to my wife’s Ph.D. graduation but I played on my phone the whole time in the back and she didn’t care since I was there at the start and the finish and she thought it sucked too.
Hopefully my kids choose to opt out of the ceremony.