As some people will know, I celebrated my convocation this past weekend, which incidentally also means I’m no longer a grad student, and so the title of this blog is now outdated, so if there any suggestions, glad to entertain them! As anyone who has convocated is already aware, a lot of the time they can be pretty boring. People/faculty/Senior administration that you’ve hardly ever seen, or maybe never seen, giving speeches with some of the same common themes, like how special all the graduates are, the significance of their achievement, and so on – in addition to the graduate’s lifelong commitment to their institution (i.e. to donate to the university).
Be that as it may, I still feel that this convocation was done exceptionally organised and well done. Probably a big contributing factor was the fact that given this was a winter convocation and not a summer one, there were a lot fewer people graduating, which made it feel that much more intimate, orderly, and composed. Basically, because things were calm and quiet, the atmosphere just felt more personal (to the point that I forgot we were still in a gym!). Speeches were relatively short and to the point, but I also found that some of them actually resonated with me, especially one woman’s speech. She’d been a former social worker or something along those lines and was now receiving an honorary degree, and spoke about the responsibility of taking what’s been learned (hardly just the “academic” stuff) and applying it to real life, to go and make a real difference and help people or make an effort to improve their lives, in whatever capacity that can be achieved. Sure, those words might sound both a little standard and cliché, but coming from her, they seemed to have real meaning and sincerity.
But having convocation and the experience of graduating again gave me the chance to talk with my mom and reflect on the past two years, and the years before that too, and share what we remembered or didn’t remember. I have to say, that having her, my family and friends while I was doing my MA made all the difference in the world. Looking back now and seeing how everything turned out, and having the benefit of clarity of vision when you look on the past, I can say I’m glad I didn’t go to some school in some other city (where things could’ve turned out in an entirely different way), because I got to experience and do so much over the course of this MA – see what teaching was like as a TA, travel, take interesting courses, meet people, etc…a lot of which I might not have been able to do had I gone elsewhere. And all of that with my family and friends nearby to act as support and offer genuine encouragement, and there were definitely more than enough stressful times when I needed it. In reminiscing with my mom, I tried to remember what my first thoughts and experiences of grad school were like, or how my first day had been. Although I can’t actually remember how the first day went, I was (after talking with some others) able to remember other early events, like writing sight exams and the get-together at a local restaurant (pretty much the only restaurant we’d go to over the span of the two years) that followed afterwards, meeting some of the professors at a grad-lunch hosted by one of the faculty, being involved with and presenting at my first grad conference, etc.
There was one other positive thing that came out of all this reflecting and remembering, because it allowed me to learn a little more about my mom’s childhood and youth once she started thinking back too. Being a child of immigrant parents, you can’t help but feel something of a disconnect or divide between you and your parents. For me, I might never really understand what their lives were like before they moved, or live with the same sort of sights and sounds that they experienced on a daily basis. Basically, there’ll be things that they understand that I won’t, because they lived it, and that can be a little frustrating. Thankfully though, there are those moments where you can get insight into what their lives were like. So I got to listen as my mom talked about her aunts and uncles, her own mom and how she had studied fine arts and specialised in sculpture, how my grandmother entered teacher’s college and became one of the youngest people working there, and once she grew up, what everyone told my mom what she was like as a baby (to quote, she “loved eating, laughing and sleeping, and hardly complained”). Then there were the more specific memories from times she could remember more clearly, like when she was 13 during a brief war with a nearby country, and how she and her family would do everything by candlelight at night, how they covered up their windows (all of which were meant as protective measures), or how whenever they’d hear the air-raid sirens everyone in her apartment would go to the bottom floor. It’s through those kinds of first-hand stories that teach you to cherish who and what you have, but I can actually visualise what things might’ve been like when my mom was younger, but also hold on to them and pass them on too. In the end, after thinking about all her experiences, she said something that she’s told me before about my own life, which was that everything comes to an end at some point, and then you’ll look back and wonder how or why you were so stressed out or worried – so there isn’t really much need to worry or be anxious. I have to admit, this doesn’t always offer much comfort, but when I look at her life and experiences, I can believe it a little more. And having officially finished my MA only reinforces that, because looking back now on the past two years, which seem to flown by in the blink of an eye, so many of the things that did stress me out, make me nervous, or just that feeling that dark clouds were always looming – all of that just feels like a faint memory now, so that only the good memories are left in their place.
Musings of a Grad Student 