Final Exercises

Colleges & Universities University of Virginia
1

<p>Well, UVa has it’s own term for ‘campus’ and ‘fresman, sophomore, junior, and senior’, so why wouldn’t it have it’s own term for ‘commencement’ exercises. </p>

<p>Here’s where I’ll be on Sunday:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.virginia.edu/majorevents/assemblylocations.pdf[/url]”>http://www.virginia.edu/majorevents/assemblylocations.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Three days and counting!</p>

2

<p>You forgot our word for “honors:” “distinction.” A final cummulative GPA of 3.400 = “graduating with distinction,” 3.600 = “graduating with higher distinction,” 3.800 = “graduating with highest distintion.” </p>

<p>I’ll watch the live feed.</p>

3

<p>Actually, we use both “honor” and “distinction” instead of “cum laude”, “magna cum laude”, and “summa cum laude”. If you’re in a departmental honors program, you graduate “with honors”, “high honors”, and “highest honors”. If you’re in a distinguished major program or have a high GPA, you graduate “with distinction”, “high distinction” or “highest distinction”. </p>

<p>I also like how we officially spell UVA with a lower-case a. Thus UVa. UVA makes me laugh sometimes.</p>

4

<p>Redbeard, will the final excercises be indoors? A couple of years ago my friend went to her s graduation at VTech and it got rained out so they had nothing at all. Ugh, I would be so disappointed. How does it work at UVa?</p>

5

<p>When I took my degree (another UVa term for graduate), it rained. The exercises were held in UHall (the old basketball area). My class finally got to march down the Lawn at our 25th reunion to make up for what we dearly missed 25 years before.</p>

<p>I am assuming that if it rains, the new venue would be the JPJ arena.</p>

6

<p>As it turned out, the weather was marvelous. There were two days of events, and it was two of the nicest days of the year.</p>

<p>They have all kinds of contingency plans:

  • Everything outdoors
  • Everything indoors
  • Last-minute changes (Lawn ceremony outdoors in the AM and move indoors for diploma ceremonies)</p>

<p>There are jumbotrons halfway up the lawn for people who can’t see the podium. There are remote viewing sites in case the weather is iffy. </p>

<p>And, they bombard parents and family with this information. Postcards go out, there’s a website, booklets, information booths, etc. The graduates go through the weekend in a fog, so it’s good that we have other sources of information. </p>

<p>It suffices to say the university knows how to do this thing right. It left us with lasting, happy memories and lots of great photos. </p>

<p>Congratulations to all the graduates.</p>