To not understand graduations?

[notjustanexpat]

I have several degrees. Always attended graduation in person, because family and DP were excited to attend and "see me graduate". I did not hate it but also gained nothing from it, besides getting the physical degree earlier than I would have if it were mailed.

I will also happily attend other people's graduation ceremonies and cheer for them. If it is important to them, of course I will be there to celebrate them!

But I do not get it. Why would anyone want to travel back to their place of study and spend a small fortune, to sit around an overheated hall for 2h just to walk on a stage for less than 30 seconds. Why not go out and have nice local dinner instead, or throw a big local party?

If you're still living where you studied, sure, why not - but most people I know moved away in between finishing the course and the graduation ceremony. I always had to travel and/or pay 1-2 months rent when I could have been elsewhere, actually working.

I get the desire to celebrate getting a degree but the ceremony is just beyond me. I have already graduated. If I don't attend, the degree is still signed - the ceremony is only symbolic!

My PhD graduation will be next year and DH + family are really excited to attend. Travel time, one-way: 3.5h(us), 10h (family). Money: min. £300 for us, probably 4 digits per person for my family.

I am seriously considering to graduate in absentia, have a local party with family after finishing any corrections (all family live in the same place) and have a nice dinner with DH the day the degree comes through.

AIBU?

Not marriage as such, but the relationship itself and the decision to make it primary and permanent; to live as a team/partnership. Don't you find that all important relationships have that effect?

Ah OK. Not marriage then.

Living as a couple is different from living as a single person, surely?? It affects all your decisions about work, family etc etc

Yes, but we were already living together with children in a property we owned jointly when we got married. So I was confused by you saying that getting married realigned/redefined/whatever your friendships. It made no difference at all to us. In fact, most of our friends didn't know we got married - some still don't if it hasn't come up in conversation.

So yes, it is not the marriage per se, it is the relationship. Maybe that was the misunderstanding.

Yes.

But when you get married you are making a public statement about that relationship and its importance, which I think does affect things.

No. I got married without making any sort of public statement whatsoever.
As I say, we were already living together with children. That's a pretty public statement as far as I'm concerned. Marriage was a legal formality and an essential one as we had children.

In contrast having a PhD has no effect at all on social expectations, who I prioritise, or who I have sex with. Only what jobs I am qualified for.

I changed my title when I got my PhD. Didn't when I got married.

It remains something I can be proud of, something that represents a sustained, deep kind of hard work that officially 'adds to the sum total of human knowledge'.

Being legally linked to some bloke because we like having sex with each other and spending time together doesn't feel like any sort of achievement to me. I'm glad it happened, but it's no one else's business, and it's not an achievement or a success on my part.

Being legally linked to some bloke because we like having sex with each other and spending time together doesn't feel like any sort of achievement to me. I'm glad it happened, but it's no one else's business, and it's not an achievement or a success on my part.

So there I think we differ. I don't think something has to be a particular "achievement" to be publicly celebrated. Love and friendship in particular.

It remains something I can be proud of, something that represents a sustained, deep kind of hard work that officially 'adds to the sum total of human knowledge'

Did you continue in academia? I did, and I think it means I didn't see the PhD as a particular endpoint. Just a tick along the way. I bundled three papers together and wrote an intro and conclusion. I then continued to try and get those papers published, and to write more in the same vein. I was part way through the first year of my first proper academic job when I submitted the thesis. It was a bit of a non-event really. (I also had a 9m old and was expecting number 2 so I was more than a bit distracted).

Personally my relationship with my husband is more than being legally linked to some bloke because we like having sex and spending time together. But it takes all sorts.

I went to mine, just loved having the celebration - getting dressed up, graduating with your friends who have been your lifeline whilst being away from family and the tough moments, plus the good parties experiences. Nice dinner, thanks to the academics etc. And yes I did quite like the photo op!

A huge part of it was for my mum though - she raised me as a single parent and financial sacrifices she made whilst I studied and but also for her support for my whole childhood, through secondary etc and she was also the only other person in my family to graduate so it was a lovely occasion for the two of us.

@irregularegular So there I think we differ. I don't think something has to be a particular "achievement" to be publicly celebrated. Love and friendship in particular.

I find it odd to instruct other people to give you gifts and publicly congratulate you because you're in a relationship with someone.

Did you continue in academia? I did, and I think it means I didn't see the PhD as a particular endpoint. Just a tick along the way.

God, no. Eight years stuck in universities was more than enough for me. I wanted to get back into the real world.

I was part way through the first year of my first proper academic job when I submitted the thesis. It was a bit of a non-event really. (I also had a 9m old and was expecting number 2 so I was more than a bit distracted).

I was also halfway through my first (and last) year of lecturing when I did my viva. My partner was hospitalised with a very serious condition. I was also homeless at the time. Passing my viva was a very important positive event in the middle of a very bad time. It was the culmination of 3 1/2 years of intense intellectual research and commitment.

Personally my relationship with my husband is more than being legally linked to some bloke because we like having sex and spending time together. But it takes all sorts.

That's just an unpleasant dig, based on either a deliberate misunderstanding of what I said, or a failure to understand a humorous, bathetic turn of phrase.

Your marriage - like mine and anyone else's - is a legal and economic contract entered into between two people who have chosen (or who have been ordered) to join their lives together logistically and sexually.

Sorry, but no amount of colour schemes, bouquets, speeches, rings, declarations of endless love, or any of the other trimmings makes any marriage more or less than that.

Unless of course you're religious and believe that God has joined you together. But you didn't mention that in any of your posts, so I assume not.

two people who have chosen to join their lives together

Yes. And I think that's a big deal, whereas your "humorous, bathetic turn of phrase", which I quoted almost word for word, seemed designed to diminish it.

I didn't instruct anyone to buy us gifts or congratulate us. We gave to our guests, thanked our guests (for their friendship) and celebrated our guests just as much as the other way round (and more than half of them had, or would soon get, PhDs )

Finally, and this isn't really relevant, but I'm not entirely sure how a PhD "represents a sustained, deep kind of hard work that officially 'adds to the sum total of human knowledge' " and yet universities are not part of the "real world".

Finally, and this isn't really relevant, but I'm not entirely sure how a PhD "represents a sustained, deep kind of hard work that officially 'adds to the sum total of human knowledge' " and yet universities are not part of the "real world".

They don't seem like contradictory statements to me. Every PhD thesis has some sort of information that wasn't previously known. (The same is emphatically not true of published papers nor of much of the post doc work that goes on.)

But universities are bizarre, self-enclosed, sterile, suspicious, silent, competitive, incestuous, lonely places. I wanted a place to share ideas and instead I found myself marking the same shitty undergrad essays and being told to rejig my thesis repeatedly to up the department's publication record.

I came back to my home city, London, which I'd missed terribly, and started working in an environment (theatre) which was almost the opposite of academia: still ideas-driven, but hands -on, practical, collective, physical and exciting.

And I found I could enjoy reading books again for their own sake.

I went to both of mine and really enjoyed them- they're not compulsory if you're not keen! For me they were a chance to celebrate the end of all the hard work with my uni friends, and to go out and party afterwards. I was working abroad for my first one and flew back for it- no regrets.

The same is emphatically not true of published papers

It is true in my field ( excluding the occasional survey article). No less true than for a PhD thesis certainly. It's a requirement of publication in a refereed journal and the standards of most journals are higher than for a thesis. But I have noticed that other fields seem to do a lot more rejigging, resulting in much longer publication lists.

I don't know what field you're in, but between me, my ex, my husband, my MIL, my father, and my friends, I'm familiar with the papers that I and others have published in humanities (philosophy, eng lit, theology, communication, and critical theory), biosciences, engineering, economics, law/jurisprudence, and computer sciences. All of them have published papers that were considerably less original than a PhD thesis (in many cases, several papers based on their PhD theses).
Refereed journals check that the specific paper isn't plagiarised and that it adds something new, in the view of the peer reviewers, but that's a much lower bar than a PhD thesis. In many cases it's the same experiment with a slightly different cohort, or the same theoretical argument used with slightly different texts.

In any case, I couldn't have spent any more of my life in the academic environment. I found it completely stultifying and very depressing. I was offered to continue in the same lecturing post, but could not have taken another year there or in any university.

But universities are bizarre, self-enclosed, sterile, suspicious, silent, competitive, incestuous, lonely places. I wanted a place to share ideas and instead I found myself marking the same shitty undergrad essays and being told to rejig my thesis repeatedly to up the department's publication record.

What makes you think "universities" are like that?
Certainly not true for most universities and most areas.

@collateryS1sters I’m studying full time, working full time over summer, part time adhoc during term time and I only have two children. I don’t use state schools because I don’t think it’s right to expect other people to pay for my reproductive choices and avoid it when possible (e.g. by paying for them to be educated myself). Funding opportunities for international students (not EU ones) are very limited and would never cover the money I would loose out on. And please do tell me some more about how you are sooo above people like me who are ‘motivated by money’ while I go out and actually support myself and my family while contributing positively to the economy instead of leaching off the state.

@Lweji What makes you think "universities" are like that? Certainly not true for most universities and most areas.

I've studied at three, taught at two, my dad worked at two, my MIL worked in another, my ex studied and worked at yet another, my husband has studied at another two. It's not a huge sample, but all of those are consistently like that. My dad left academia for similar reasons back in the 80s.

I was also driven out by the politics - both the internal type, and also the engagement with world politics and how it crossed over into racism & other types of horrible prejudice. I found it a very oppressive and unpleasant environment and have preferred the other contexts that I've worked in over the past 15 years or so to be far better.

[Grammar fail in the last sentence there, but you know what I mean.]

But from what you said earlier they're all humanities.

?? No, I said:

I and others have published in humanities (philosophy, eng lit, theology, communication, and critical theory), biosciences, engineering, economics, law/jurisprudence, and computer sciences.

My degrees are all in humanities (although i've ended up working in the sciences via a weird career route, and my A-levels were sciencey) but my ex (whom I was with throughout his MSc and PhD) is an engineer/computer scientist, my husband and MIL are bioscientists, my dad's a lawyer (and was previously a law lecturer), while two of my closest friends are PhDs/lecturers in economics and computer science. So my first-hand experience is of humanities, but I know other departments pretty intimately.

That is potentially quite outing, isn't it? Fortunately I haven't posted much on this username

Killjoy.

Yanbu. I never got it either. A load of self-congratulatory pomp.

Stargazy what exactly is wrong with congratulating yourself on a job well done? This whole ‘oh it’s nothing, anyone being proud is an arrogant and self involved narcissist’ schtick is very, very irritating.

cardibach it’s very much in keeping with a certain ethos you see on here though. No one over the age of seven must celebrate a birthday or they’re an attention seeking narc. You want people to come to your wedding??? How much of a bridezilla princess are you??? And woe betide you if you want to go out with your husband for your anniversary afterwards. How unreasonable, LITERALLY NO ONE CARES YOU GOT MARRIED ON THAT DATE (apparently), I can’t even remember the date of my anniversary because it’s so unimportant. Christmas? Bah humbug. And now graduations are de trop too.

It’s fine to choose to live that way yourself, but some posters seem as though they won’t be content until they’ve sucked any joy at a life event or desire to mark it in some way out of everyone else’s lives too.

I am sorry Coll didn't have anice time in the university enivronment. Lots of other people do and plenty like to celebtrate their degrees with their family. It's a pretty natural desire, but if you don't like it then don't.

stargazy I work at a university and attend a number of graduations every year so it would be easy to become jaded but yesterday I had the absolute pleasure of watching a young woman I've known since she was 8 graduate as well as one of my neighbours, a single mum who lost her husband a few years ago. It's been a tough road for her and she deserved to celebrate. There was nothing self-congratulatory or pompous about it. Just a sense of joy - and relief!!

But of course MN rules mean wanting to celebrate anything makes you a complete narcissist. 🙄

Stagazy if I make it to the end of my course I'll be congratulating myself and my peers until I'm blue in the face. I'll be posting all over social media and I'll book the best restaurant I can afford. Little old me, never thought I'd get to university...

I sit through a lot of graduations, too, and despite having heard 'Zadok the Priest' and the same Latin mutterings more often than I can shake a stick at, I find often them quite moving -- someone wobbling across the platform in a gown, mortarboard and some high heels they should have worn in a bit more first is sometimes the culmination of a lot of dogged work in deeply unideal personal circumstances.

I have to say that running into one of my new graduates not on campus, and congratulating her heartily - as I know she's overcome some challenges - meant a lot more to me than clapping for the one student I knew the other day, when she didn't even spot me.
Likewise we all try and drop in to say a slightly weepy congratulations when the 3rd years get their results and that is a really nice moment.

Our child didn't particularly want to attend her degree ceremony, and as we live thousands of miles away, we decided not to bother, as we will hopefully be at the ceremony for her Master's later on this year. She was on campus at the time of her first degree ceremony, though, and we have a brilliant serendipitous photo of her chohort of graduands gowned and sipping bubbly in the background whilst she, in her usual casual wear, is shaking hands with a university administrator who kindly handed over her degree certificate in person rather than sending it by post!