Thoughts on a graduation (again)


I was at the PICC (again) yesterday afternoon for a graduation (yet again). Okay. Let me explain that previous sentence - as professor at DLS-CSB, I am required to attend as many graduations as possible and the school holds one every term and each one is held at the PICC.

But yesterday was a bit more memorable because my son was graduating from College. Yay! The bad news is that he was part of around 1,200 new nursing graduates from just one school. I think we easily produced 100,000 new nurses this graduation season. But the prospects for nurses still look bright - daw. Besides, my son really wanted to take up nursing anyway. Am hoping he goes to Medical school but that's wishful thinking. He is typical of his generation - he wants things quick. He wants instant gratification. He has no patience for processes and for things he doesn't see practical use for.

Anyway. Because I have attended so many of these graduation ceremonies in the last ten years I have become quite detached from it all. We at DLS-CSB has reduced it to a science, our graduation ceremonies operate like clockwork. I know, though, that the experience mean more to the graduates as it should be. It's their graduation, after all.

So I was quite annoyed yesterday that the focus of my son's graduation ceremonies were not the graduates it seemed but the officials of the school. While the graduates were herded into the hall like driven cattle, the school officials were treated like absolute monarchs. Each school official was introduced as he or she entered the hall and believe it or not, they waited until the official actually got onstage before they called on the next one. Each official had to march alone from the door of the PICC Plenary Hall down to the aisle, up to the stage. The entrance of the administrators, trustees, etc, took all of 20 minutes!!!

As if these were not enough, each speaker had to not only recognize each of the administrators one by one (roll call!!!), they actually were asked to stand up by at least three people who had roles in the program. Overkill!!! I complained about it to my son on the way home and he basically confirmed that that is the way officials in that college are treated in every occasion.

Anyway. I couldn't help but really notice just how different members of today's generation really are from say, my generation. During my graduation, we were sooooooooo formal and behaved according to established protocols. We were told that a graduation gown was a very sacred thing to wear.

Today's generation are definitely more expressive and comfortable with their feelings. They cheered, howled, jumped in the air. They are more natural.

When our graduation ceremonies were over, we also threw our graduation caps into the air but we shed tears while that song from Bagets played endlessly (am sure you know that song!). Yesterday, the graduates immediately hopped and danced to "I got a feeling...that tonight's gonna be a good night." Whew.

Anyway (again). To members of the 2010 class - congratulations!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Open Letter To Our Leaders

Dear Tita Cory, Senators, Congressmen, Businessmen, Media people, Leftists, and all Bleeding Hearts Out There: I am angry. And I know that there are many out there who are angrier than I am for the same reason. And that reason is simple. I am sick and tired of all you guys claiming to speak for me and many Filipinos. I feel like screaming every time you mouth words about fighting for my freedom and my rights, when you obviously are just thinking about yours. You tell me that the essence of democracy is providing every citizen the right to speak his or her mind and make his or her own informed judgments, but you yourselves do not respect my silence and the choices I and many others have made. In other words, your concept of democracy is limited to having your rights and your freedoms respected, at the expense of ours. I am utterly flabbergasted that you still do not get it: we already responded to your calls, and our response has been very clear - we chose not to heed your calls to go t...
Read more

Farewell, Victor

Image
This is my column today. Renato Victor Ebarle Jr. was at the prime of his life; barely 27 years old and just starting to build his career in human resource management. At the time of his death, he was recruitment manager of the Hotel Peninsula Manila. To say that he still had the whole world ahead of him sounds like a cliché but those among us who actually knew him, those among us who were aware of the kind of passion he had for life and for his work, people like me who had the privilege of having been consulted by him on many professional matters, know this with a certain degree of certainty. I was Victor’s professor in three major subjects when he was in college. In each one of them, he sat at the first row, which said a lot about the kind of person he was. Professors know this for a fact: Bullies don’t sit in front of the class where they cannot annoy anyone. I was his thesis adviser and he and his team spent a whole academic school year trying to break new grounds on the question o...
Read more

How That Letter Came To Be...

I had some time in my hands last night. I bloghopped. For the very first time I got to read in detail what people are saying about that letter and about me in other blogs. I have already responded to most of the comments in this blog. However, I cannot possibly answer all comments given that I have only ten fingers and there are only 24 hours in a day. It is very tempting, but this blog is not my life and contrary to the overactive imagination of some people, I do not have the resources to do that. I cannot possibly monitor the thousands of blogs out there. Besides, the comments in this and other blogs (and even in the newspapers) do tend to answer each other, and I do not fancy myself as an ultimate arbiter or judge with the final and definitive opinion (I do not think anyone is qualified to do that unless that person died on a cross and resurrected in three days), so there is really not much to say after reading the various pros and cons. Some people do a better job at it anyway. I d...
Read more