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?

@CollaterlyS1sters
Apologies for not having read that bit properly.

Still, I don't think it's a fair assessment of Universities as a whole. I'm sure there's lots and more interesting work outside, but it seems odd to me that all of those people had only rehashed PhD work published as post-docs or were pushed to publish more of the same.
Unless they were in areas that didn't depend on project funding. Still, there's only so much you can published without novelty.

The main issue is the workload associated with teaching. If it's not something you enjoy, you're definitely better out. And it does tend to leave little time for actual research. But it's doable.

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.

Hear, hear.

@Lweji

Still, I don't think it's a fair assessment of Universities as a whole. I'm sure there's lots and more interesting work outside, but it seems odd to me that all of those people had only rehashed PhD work published as post-docs or were pushed to publish more of the same.
Unless they were in areas that didn't depend on project funding. Still, there's only so much you can published without novelty.

I'm not saying that NO published papers are interesting/novel/worth publishing. I'm just saying that a lot of them are not. I've followed a lot of these people's careers and I don't see much progression post-doc (with one exception, a family friend who started out in economics but has ended up as a huge expert on John Locke. Not incidentally, she was the first person I ever knew who (a) didn't tell anyone she'd got married or have a wedding and (b) didn't change her name . It had a lot of impact on me as a kid.)

The main issue is the workload associated with teaching. If it's not something you enjoy, you're definitely better out. And it does tend to leave little time for actual research. But it's doable.

Of course it's doable. But I found it mindnumbingly tedious and frustrating after only a couple of years of teaching. I can't imagine carrying on with it beyond that. And I was teaching at decent (RG) universities; these were allegedly some of the brightest undergraduates in the country.

But god, their essays were shit, and god, it was tedious marking them.

And then to be moderated and to be told that actually, this particular piece of shit is allegedly a 2:1, and this is a first, when they're barely literate. I felt like I was participating in a mass fraud.

Or alternatively - having to call in a third-year student for really obviously plagiarising most of their dissertation. Which happened astonishingly often.

I've done many different tasks within my career since leaving academia, some of them very mechanical and some very underpaid, but nothing comes close to university teaching for sheer boredom, frustration, and worst of all, feeling like you are in part responsible for the cheapening of the very idea of valuing original thought and discovery.

Collaterly, your experience sounds disturbingly similar to mine.

@Medianoche which bit in particular? (Nice username btw.)

I graduated at 28 having got my degree while working full time. I left school with shite qualifications and I clawed my way through evening classes and using all of my annual leave to complete assignments to get there. I was so, so proud to cross that stage.

I’ll be going to my Masters graduation next summer, and I’m starting a PhD next year so that’s another ceremony I’ll be attending. I want to enjoy those 30 seconds of applause from my parents and 1000 strangers

Collaterly - the marking of terrible essays and the feeling or perpetuating a fraud. Particular highlight for me was when students who failed a masters module were allowed to resit the exact same paper but to sit it as open book. Answers were still poor.

I went for my undergrad degree to meet and celebrate with all my friends from 3 years living together. We'd experienced the highs and lows of heartbreak, struggles completeing the degree. I was proud to see my friends up on stage as i knew how hard thry had worked. It's a ceremony as is a wedding, christening, birthday or funeral where you mark something important to you.

Also There was a huge night out planned after. The last night where the friends you have made are all together again. You only live once!

I just graduated last month at the age of 27. After brilliant grades in high school to then falling pregnant at 19, getting married, working, etc. You're darn right I was going to my graduation because it was the culmination of 4 years of really intense work, during which I could never visualise actually getting my first class honours. In reality though, my husband actually missed me get my degree as I got the times mixed up . And then me, husband, kids, sister, brother and mum went for a lovely meal. It was also a last chance to see my lecturers who have been an important part of the journey.
I begin my PGDE in August and will again attend because I am bloody proud of myself and want my kids to see how hard work pays off.
But I can see your point all the same and would possibly feel different if I didn't live as close to my uni as I do. Though if I had completed a PhD nobody I knew would ever hear the end of it!

@Medianoche
Yes - shit, isn't it?
It's almost as if universities are primarily interested in making as much money as possible and don't really care about the quality of the degrees they're awarding.

Did you also leave academia?

@CollaterlyS1sters I did leave, about a decade ago. By the end, it was really shitty. I can’t imagine going back.

I love teaching undergraduates. After 17 years I'm ready to do something else and contribute in a different way, but fundamentally I have loved my time teaching intelligent, motivated young people and seeing them progress. It is a great privilege.

Congratulations, amused and shivers. You absolutely deserve to be proud of yourselves!

Thank you @bibliomania