Commencement

Commencement is a strange day, which reflects the confused emotions associated with the occasion in its vocabulary. For instance, the title commencement, usually means initiation, but it is used to mark the ending of an individual's college career in a graduation. Commence comes from Latin "to initiate together", but was originally the same word as consecrate. The two words split to give us their present meanings in Old French (Webster's New World College Dictionary, 4th ed). The "exercises" associated with commencement are not your typical jog around the block, but a formal program, which is a purely American usage of the word derived from exercise (or parade) grounds used in the armed forces. Maybe in using normal words in such a strange fashion, the average American university is trying to flaunt the superior education of its students, or perhaps the people responsible for commencement names were just as confused as the graduates. Anyway, it's an accurate reflexion of the jumbled chaos that is graduation.

Congratulations and good luck to all of the seniors and prof. Pickett, who received the award for excellence in teaching for a young faculty member, and happy Father's Day.

First Post

Generally, I have a policy about getting at least 8 hours of sleep the night before I have to do something important, but that policy failed today. Today was, however, a momentous day of firsts including:
1. My first taste of coffee. It was pretty unpleasant. I don't really understand how people can enjoy drinking it, but to each his own.
2. My first bona fide all-nighter. Working all night until class the next morning.
3. My first test on less than 7 hours of sleep the night before. Brought to you by firsts 1 and 2.
4. My first blog post. The content of this post is a function of the previous occurrences.
Now that that's over, it's time for a nap (definitely not a first).