May 9, 2016

This weekend I believe I sat through my 30th college commencement ceremony.  I say that with the hesitancy of "believe" because there were a couple of years at Davenport University where we did multiple commencement ceremonies across Michigan and Indiana; the total number of them, whether in terms of a single year, or total number of years with the multiple ceremonies, is something I don't quite remember.  So, I am going to say 30, knowing that minimally that is the number.

I have sat in the audience as a faculty member. I have sat on the main stage as a faculty member. I have read names (still my favorite role, despite the challenges, more later).  I have been the guest speaker. I can easily name some of the highlights, which almost always involve some level of anxiety (no one wants to be the person remembered for the wrong reasons).

So, I give you my top 10 list of Commencement memories, in somewhat chronological order:

• At either my undergraduate or master's commencement ceremony (I can't remember which), Governor (or maybe former Governor at that time) Jay Rockefeller was the guest speaker.  Students around me had snuck bottles of champagne in under their robes.  A couple of them wanted to hit Rockefeller with a well-aimed cork as it was set off from the bottle. All I could think about was the chaos that would have occurred if someone had hit him. I don't think anyone got close.  At 6'6" tall, Rockefeller is a large target, so we may have gotten lucky.
• At one of my first Detroit College of Business commencement ceremonies, the guest speaker delivered the speech that everyone fears.  She clued us in on her strategy early on, when she said "then, when I was 6" and we followed her through year by year (and she wasn't a young woman, either, so the milestones were like rings in the trunk of a tree).  That day crystallized for me the value of brief commencement speeches.
• Reading names always brings the struggles of pronunciations. I quickly realized that if I spoke really loudly, so that everybody could hear me (these ceremonies were often in buildings like Cobo Arena in Detroit or Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, where the audience often spreads to the rafters of huge, acoustic-impaired structures), and really confidently that usually only the student and his/her family would know I had screwed up the names.  For the most part, that plan served me well.  Still, I have had my moments. One year, I had been reviewing names with friends the days before and we couldn't help but add the necessary Barry White-like cadence for student Fullilove (full-o-love).  Commencement came and I forgot to edit out my Barry White cadence. Oops!
• Then there were the east Asian names that phonetically were always difficult.  I forget their actual spellings, but the girl whose name came out as Meow Meow, caused me great anxiety, but nothing compares to the Vietnamese guy whose name, he claimed, phonetically came out as Phuc You. 
• Perhaps even more embarrassing was the year I messed up a really easy name because I was so happy to get a card without my or a student's phonetic translation scrawled on it that I just completely blew it.  The look that student gave me as he looked backwards walking to the president is one I can't forget.
• When Davenport had multiple commencement ceremonies across Michigan and Indiana, I felt guilty about the events for Indiana.  The combined ceremony for a small number of Indiana campuses produced about 90 some graduates. I used to purposely slow down reading the names so that the event seemed less like a drive-by shooting ("look, there's the president's caravan pulling up now.  They'll keep the cars running while they run in and run out for the ceremony."). 
• The saddest part about doing away with the Indiana ceremonies (and sending everyone up to Grand Rapids) was losing the "Hoosiers"-type gymnasium for the event (the place screamed Hickory to me every time). The only thing missing was Dennis Hopper stumbling in half drunk. Or maybe he did. You really can't see much with the lights in your eyes when you are on stage.
• At another Davenport ceremony in Saginaw, afterwards a rumor was shared that a disgrunted ex-employee might have shown up with a gun.  Apparently the president even wore a bullet-proof vest that day.  All I know is that my seat had me dangerously close to the president, and I was not given a bullet-proof vest.  He probably didn't need the vest as the presidential medallion might have blocked any bullet, and could have given me the vest.
• When I was the guest speaker for the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences graduate hooding in 2010, it afforded me the chance to be on the stage for the College's overall graduation event.  That meant I was on the same stage as former President Bill Clinton, who was the full ceremony's guest speaker.  I panicked about what I was supposed to say or do if he came to shake my hand.  I worried not.  The stage was huge and I was on the one side, while he was on the other.  He pressed flesh (well, so to speak) with only the stage participants on the one side.
• This year at SMC, I had to hand the diploma covers to the president. It is the first time I have had to do it (we only instituted the general practice last year).  As we are slogging through the last group of graduates (Arts and Sciences) whose names began with R and S, I noticed the diploma covers quickly running out.  My only other visible option were some of the Ferris State covers (we have Ferris State students who can complete on our campus, so they were announced first and we had about 15 diploma covers left). I wasn't even sure there were going to be enough of them.  I can't see the line of remaining graduates, as they are coming in through one of the gym doors.  Luckily right as I am down to the last two SMC covers, and as I am frantically trying to get my deans to help me figure out what to do, one of them points out that another 25 or so covers are tucked into the lectern.  Luckily, we never run out.  However, faculty in the front row got a bit of amusement from my apparently ever darkening crimson face.

I haven't included the memories (such as they are) with the only three ceremonies I have ever missed: my own doctorate hooding at Indiana in 1993 (it didn't seem worth driving from Detroit to Bloomington for the few minutes of fame); a 2010 ceremony at Davenport University where it would have been nice to have some closure from my tenure there; and the 2015 SMC ceremony, which occurred the same weekend as my parents' funeral.  Not surprisingly one would rather remember the glorious occasions with happiness, and good humor, at the slight glitches that have occurred.