<p>My sainted husband, a college prof, makes a point of attending each year the spring and winter graduations at the mid sized college where he teaches, which does have each student march across the stage. He gets a thrill to see his students graduate.</p>
<p>Bless him. I used to teach there, and even though I loved my students, I skipped graduations. Few things bore me more than sitting through long ceremonies like that. I only went to my own college graduation because my mom made me.</p>
<p>Funny thing is that H was a first gen h.s. graduate, and didn’t attend any of his college or grad school ceremonies. Says a lot about his kind heart that he goes out of his way to attend his students’ graduations.</p>
<p>I was Assistant Registrar at a college once upon a time. One of my jobs was to help hand out diplomas. We made sure beforehand that we were pronouncing names correctly (small school). I enjoyed it!</p>
<p>D’s school had all awards each kid earned, plus scholarships in a program. THEN they also read all off as each kid walked across the stage … overkill, if you ask me. It didn’t take that long, with 180 kids, but on top of the mass beforehand … well, I was hungry!! What I did like, though, was that they announced the college each kid was attending. That was cool.</p>
<p>Our school has awards night at a different time, where they announce all of the scolarships. Our old school had 881 grads, it would take too long to read through the scholarships, awards and recipients, plus the speeches. If you could get through 10 names a minute, you are looking at just for the names 90 minutes!</p>
<p>VERY common in HS, even more so in college. I’m pretty sure that I got my HS in the mail…might have been able to go pick it up at the school, but I think they made us wait until the sophomores and juniors were finished with classes (seniors got out a week early) because they didn’t want us disrupting classes by coming back after we were finished.</p>
<p>My University alma mater (a large state public with about 22000 students and about 3500 graduating each spring and about 1800 in December) prides itself on being one of the few universities (so they claim) in which they actually give you your real, signed, diploma as you walk across the stage. Seemed like it took a lot of coordination, but it was a very cool thing to have done (because of this system, I even had a very thoughtful, personalized card put in my diploma from my school’s Director of Greek Affairs who I had worked with very closely over the previous few years).</p>
<p>My S was handed an empty folder because he had expected the school to overlook one homework assignment he hadn’t turned in. My mom still doesn’t know she attended his sham graduation. (Of course he did eventually earn the real diploma.)</p>
<p>My cousin from Naperville never bothered to pick up his real hs diploma from high school. He’s a junior at Bradley University now and just recently his sister (who is now a freshman) asked for his real diploma. The lady in the main office was in shock. I guess thats one consequence of not having a real ceremony</p>