first photo: glen with a handful of MS&E grads
second photo: our grads from the grad party we had on Saturday. We’re missing a few, but you get the idea.
This was a pretty hectic weekend–it was graduation time for a number of our students!
This was my first Stanford graduation, so I wasn’t sure what to expect…
Here are some observations:
1) Stanford doesn’t take graduation too seriously. Less secure schools make everybody act formal and solemn, but Stanford lets students act celebratory at their celebration. You can see a video of the aptly-named “Wacky Walk.” I heard there were streakers, but I didn’t see any. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were–it fits the school culture.
2) The commencement speaker was Alejandro Toledo, the president of Peru. There’s a video snippet from his speech online. He’s got an amazing story. He was raised in abject poverty, and through the intervention of the Peace Corps was able to come to America to get a degree, and ultimately to become the first indigenous president of his country.
3) It was HOT! I’m just glad I didn’t get worse sunburn than I did.
4) After the main graduation ceremony, there were around 70 smaller graduation ceremonies for individual departments. That was the one where they call students name by name and actually hand them a diploma. The one I attended, for the major of Management, Science, and Engineering had a rather scrumptious free buffet afterwards.
5) We’re really going to miss our grads. Bye, guys! Don’t forget to write!