Good one. My wife and I have often said there is NOTHING more boring than a graduation ceremony - even one’s own! I remember my son’s college grad - a massive deal at the state school. Not only were we all bored, but he was pissed when they mispronounced his name so poorly he didn’t realize it was him. He texted us asking if we had to stick around for the rest of it. Of course, we said, “No.” So he just got up and walked out down the center aisle of the huge arena!
We still occasionally express our amazement that The Cosby Show once dedicated an entire episode to a daughter’s graduation ceremony. Most boring half hour of TV EVER!
I went to one good graduation ceremony. Elizabeth Warren was the speaker at my son-in-laws law school graduation, and that was cool.
My worst activity was helping my daughter with the stupid art projects the school assigned for all sorts of elementary school classes. Dioramas, posters, blah, blah, blah. They taught nothing. She has many talents but art is not one of them.
Never had kids. When I graduated college and then when I got a master’s degree, I had the option of not attending. They mailed my diplomas to me.
We did go to a nephew’s high school graduation. Often there is limited space in the venue so each grad gets a set number of tickets, and not enough for aunts and uncles to attend. But this ceremony was held in the basketball arena of the large university in the same town, so anyone could attend.
Said arena was not air conditioned, and it was a blistering hot day. We ended up sitting near the back, and were so far from the graduating class that I spent most of the program looking at the back of some unknown kid’s head, thinking it was my nephew. I don’t remember any of the events, but it was at least an hour after the graduates entered the facility that they started calling each grad’s name. We left early, shortly after seeing nephew get his diploma.
Nephew has a brother a couple of years younger. We sat little brother down and told him, “We gave your brother $50 as a graduation present. We’ll give you $100 if we don’t have to go to see you get your diploma.” He laughed and readily agreed.
Oh good lord - another good one. Such things were TORTURE for my son. At one point my wife actually elicited tears from a stupid HS AP English teacher, by observing that we did not understand that AP English, in fact, involved a significant component of arts and crafts.
Indeed. I loved the band and choir concerts. The music teachers did an amazing job, and many of the kids were actually pretty talented!
The thing I hated most was the “major project” for social studies in grade 10. My son was in a “creative/talented/gifted” program, and the THEORY behind giving them a really big project for the year was a good one.
In practice, the teacher in charge was scattered, disorganized, and the instructions given were sparse, contradictory and in some cases made no sense whatsoever. The research methods they were taught were just plain wrong. (eg. when my son went to the university librarians and got copies of original map material from the archives, he was told that this was not good, because he should have looked up the information in a book in the school library.)
Gifted students being taught by mediocre teachers. That’ll work out well.
Honestly it wasn’t the activities, cross country, band, drama, soccer or even the cheerleading for rocket football stint my youngest did where they played teams way the fuck away in distant towns two counties over. Torture was by and far the stone cold bitchy moms of the small town who never let down their guard to exchange pleasantries or small talk. They stick in their clique unless of course they were alone all by themselves and then they found their voice. I remained cordial as our kids were friends and tried not let it bother me too much and eventually I stopped trying and ignored them all.
I’ve had this one. I asked them where they got their medical degree from, or if the have a doctoral degree in psychology and are a member of the provincial Psychological Association. “Because”, I followed up, “diagnosing a child without these qualifications would be a VERY BAD IDEA”
No kids, so I’ll tell it from me from a kid’s point of view.
I remember it was fourth grade. I had very basic piano lessons, and also there was the school play of which I was in the very generic and numerous cast of a jury hearing cases about bicycle safety. The piano lessons culminated in a recital.
Well, I told my mom about the play, but forgot to tell her about the recital.
BIG fucking mistake.
Because she hated the play, and let me know it, especially after finding out about the recital she missed, which she seemed certain I’d forgotten out of sheer spite. After all, I would know that she would like to attend a piano recital way more than a fucking boring-ass play that I barely had a line in, and shouted out that line in unison with a bunch of others.
Yeah Mom, I’m sure you would’ve been transfixed by a handful of kids and me plunking out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. After all, Mozart wrote it.
Far & away the winter elementary school band concert. Every group (band, orchestra, string orchestra, etc), played Hot Cross Buns; most of them poorly given they hadn’t even held the instrument three months earlier.
Back-to-skool night was typically held the second night of school. The teacher didn’t know you kids name yet, the kids couldn’t tell you much about the teacher yet. 15 mins per class to find out where they went to college, how many pets/kids they had & for them to read over the syllabus & tell you their homework policy (if it’s late they lose credit); about the only thing I got out of it was to know what to be able to put a face to who the kid was talking about later in the semester.
I didn’t have kids, but my high school had an awards ceremony shortly before graduation called Class Day, and attendance was mandatory for seniors and of course band and chorus too because it was basically a dress rehearsal for graduation. It lasted about THREE HOURS, longer than the actual graduation (and my HS had classes of 500-plus students).
When I was a senior, I told my mother not to attend, because she didn’t really want to, and I wasn’t going to get any awards anyway besides my top 15% cords, but she went anyway. She actually said she enjoyed it, and I’m pretty sure she believed that herself.
I haven’t seen assorted Dress Up Days yet in this thread. I hear about them all the time on Facebook, and I just can’t imagine things like that ending well for children who can’t participate, or don’t want to.
My youngest was a gifted bassoonist. It just came easily to her. When in Jr High, she entered and won a regional competition. There were money prizes, to be awarded at a concert of all the winners.
So, leading up to the concert, I kept asking her, “Do you think you should practice your piece?” Over and over, “No, dad - I’ve got this!” So eventually I stopped bugging her.
Concert day comes along, she goes up there to play her piece - with piano accompaniment - and SPECTACULARLY CRASHES AND BURNS! I mean, as badly as you could imagine any musician shitting the bed, she shat it worse.
Now I give my kids no end of praise when they do something well - or even make a good effort, but I don’t compliment shit. So when she came back to her seat, I said, “Well, THAT sucked!” All these other parents were comforting her and saying, “Oh it wasn’t that bad.” No! It WAS that bad!
She has since told me it was shitty of me to say that. Maybe it was. But among the countless decisions and actions I made raising 3 kids, telling a kid she screwed up because she was too lazy, and forcing me to sit thru that debacle - well - I kinda consider that a high point.
See, at my high school in Indianapolis, one of the big ones, we were specifically told not to clap until the very end. If you did, you risked the wrath of the student that was clapped for, as they would not receive their diploma until after the ceremony.
It would have taken fuckin’ forever to get through that ceremony if there’d been clapping for everyone.
For me it was swim meets. Especially because my daughter wasn’t at all competitive - she was on the team because she liked to swim and at her school, that was all it took to make the team. I went to one meet, chatted with one of the other mothers, watched my daughter come in last in her heat, then went home. She told me, without my asking, that I didn’t need to go to the meets. She truly didn’t care - she just wanted to swim.
Not exactly school related, but she also took piano lessons, and the recitals were true torture. Lessons were given by a private teacher in her home, but she scheduled the recitals at her church to accommodate everyone, then asked that no one leave when their child was done out of courtesy to the rest. I understand. But those of us with beginners, whose performance might last 2 minutes, were captive thru all levels up to the most senior, each of whom would play several selections, resulting in at least 2 hours on a hard church bench trying to keep our bored beginner from going crazy. I was kinda glad when she decided she didn’t want lessons any longer.
As others have noted - there is usually something going on at a track meet that you can watch.
Eldest some was a pretty good NAIA runner. We prided ourselves on always going to all the boys’ events. This meant going to cross country meets. Two races (men’s and women’s) and on many courses you were lucky to spot him 3 times.
My kids were never in swimming, but from what I saw at local pools, some of those meets looked like a LONG SLOG! Might be my prejudice/ignorance, but swimming never really impressed me as a tremendous spectator sport - as so much of it is under the water.
What surprised me was the pace. There really wasn’t anything going on most of the time. They had to move the hurdles, or whatever, between events. But it seemed to take even longer than that. No one was in charge of keeping things moving.
Are you sure there were no field events going on throughout? Because generally the throwing and jumping is going on pretty much continuously during and in between the running events.
A certain amount of the pacing is to accommodate runners who run multiple events - to allow recovery time in between heats/events. And another complication is that, even tho most races use the same finish line, many use different starting points, which require some setup.
I’m probably making it sound worse that it was. On a nice sunny day, it’s a pleasant way to spend a few hours. The kids were having a blast, so that’s nice too. On cold rainy days, we’d ask her how it went.
Most boring half hour of TV EVER!