Convocation can be embarrassing. I see the possibility at every session. This week we are celebrating the success of hundreds and hundreds of students in eight graduation ceremonies. Sitting on stage I get a really good close up of each and every one who crosses the boards to be hooded by the appropriate dean and then congratulated by the Chancellor. When I am doing the hooding of graduate students I am especially conscious of how exposed these students feel. Cameras are flashing, over a thousand people are in the audience watching, the video cameras are rolling for future broadcast, and all one can hear is the clickety click of heels across the floor of the stage. Their families in the audience hold their breaths as their progeny walk into the spotlight for a brief, important moment. Some of the hands I shake in that moment are as wet as sponges. The hoods they pass over to me are downright soggy in the places where they have been gripped so tightly for at least a half hour before show time.
(more…)

It’s odd to think about literally writing a final examination these days—that is, with pen and paper. For that matter it’s odd to think about anyone writing anything. But I was off to my locker the other day for a work out and passed the gym filled with hundreds of undergrads writing their finals, not a mobile phone or iPad in sight. It struck me as an already dated image, the way an image of a professor with chalk in his hand before a green blackboard now looks very ‘fifties, the scapegoat decade, before technology invaded everything. (more…)

“Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.” Oscar Wilde said that, among many other wise and witty things.
(more…)