You soooooo totally should get presents, Jesse. Also, make your parents come. I mean, someone needs to stand in the audience holding the video camera, and that's what parents are for.
The only family I have that I might send graduation announcements to are in Georgia, which really isn't all that terribly far, and I'd feel bad with that sort of thing, since they keep asking me to visit, and I keep not going. So it seems mean to be all like, remember me? Yeah, I know, haven't seen me for a long time... I'm graduating! Please send your check or money order to this address. And yet I KNOW they wouldn't understand the implied money thing, and they would think it an invitation, and then I'd have the phone call about how they plan on never being on a plane again, because of 9/11, but they're very sad they're going to miss my graduation.
One of my favorite blogs, Language Log, takes a satirical swipe at the Kansas Board of Education's Scopes Trial II: Asshat Boogaloo":
"Linguists boycott Kansas hearings on intelligent design of English"
WARNING: Very, very dry.
Six years ago, when conservatives previously held a majority of seats on the Kansas board of education, they established guidelines encouraging schools to give equal time to the theory of linguistic creationism, which claims that English was created directly by God five hundred years ago at the start of the Great Vowel Shift so that the King James Bible could be translated into it.
However, 616 is the real evil deal, right?
And here I was thinking you were talking about the area code.
my parents skipped my Masters as my brothers was the same day
That's so unfair! How was this decision reached?
I think graduation announcements are key for the not-that-close (geographically and familially) people. They'd never actually come to the graduation, but you want to remind them to send you stuff.
There's that, and at some graduations (namely mine and my cousin's) You only get a few invites because someone famous is speaking. Mr. H was the only one who got to come to mine out of the 4 invites I was allotted.
I just got back from a smoke break- my second- which means it's the Arts & Leisure section that goes out with me. For a long time I've really liked the tv blurbs that go alongside the schedule. Today, I finally looked at who was writing them and realized why. They're written by David Bianculli. Today's was full of snarky references to last week's presidential preemption, and one on the Apprentice that referenced the AI/Paula Abdul thing.
Ooh, will I get presents for getting a master's?? I wonder if my parents will even come to graduation
I got presents from my parents. Well, present, really, but that present was a car, so I'm not complaining. They came to the ceremony, too. In fact, they insisted because I didn't walk for undergrad. At that point, my mom said it felt like I had been in college 7 years without ever graduating. She needed the ceremony for closure more than I did.
the decision was reached in that I had graduated undergrad the year before (which they attended with grandmothers in tow) and they hate NYC.
My mom came to my graduation (undergrad) and my gift from her was my grandmother's diamond earrings. My dad couldn't attend but he sent a gift too, my car payment book and insurance bill (they had been paying them while I was in college). He thought he was so very funny. My brother's master's graduation was ignored by even my brother as he didn't even take a break before beginning his PhD studies. We threw him a big party when he finished that though.
Yeah, I think we only get 3 or 4 tickets.
I mean, someone needs to stand in the audience holding the video camera, and that's what parents are for.
No video camera. I have yet to see a videotaped ceremony that I actually wanted to watch.
