Oh God, I did this on my own graduation. There's a back story. I'd always wanted to do an MBA, seeing it as a real achievement. My successful, rich entrepreneurial uncle had an MBA, and it was seen very much as a gold star qualification. I tried so hard and worked myself into the ground, through definitely the hardest four years of my adult life. My daughters both have deep and severe MH problems whoch worsened into suicidal ideation and attempts. Then I suffered ill health, chronic pain, enforced unemployment, then finally agonising grief after my dad got first bowel cancer, then the all clear, then literally six months later, was diagnosed with acute leukemia and died 6 weeks later. I felt like this MBA had challenged me so much, even being very academic, and having got top grades in my youth.
Anyway. I had built it up in my head. I took four years to complete it, painstskingly, and got a distinction by a whisker.
The graduation day was a big event for me, so I paid for the whole family to come along, hotels, meals, outfits. I even got a gown, and paid for a photo package.
Of course, pride came before a fall. 😔 When we turned up for the graduation, at a backwater town in deepest Wales, we realised the whole thing was essentially being used as an immigration scam. There was an MBA ceremony coming out as we arrived, where every single person seemed to be from the same place in Africa. The second graduation, the one I was in, the whole cohort was from the same place in India, to the extent that out of the thousands of people who went up, 20 people had exactly the same rare first name/surname.
I'm not a Reform voter. It wasn't so much the immigration aspect that bothered me. It was the fact that the prized MBA I'd sought so eagerly and slaved over was devalued in my eyes, being used as a means to get a visa. 😬 There were only 30 students in my cohort, so I hadn't realised they had literally thousands of students being funneled through the course. It just felt so cheap.
Anyway. I really struggled to regain composure. I was really embarrassed to have brought all my family. None of us are racists, so I did try to take the perspective that it was amazing to see all these lovely young people from elsewhere in the world desperate to make a life here, all hopeful and enthusiastic. There was that consolation.
But the point remained, the qualification had been franchised out so massively to such an unthinkable huge number of people. It wasn't quite the gold standard elite club I had imagined.
And the family couldn't help but pity me because it was so obvious. There were many tumbleweed moments.