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.
1 comment:
Hey! It's the crazy friend who let your roommate chop a foot of hair off her last night (thanks again for sending it in for me!)
Anywho, this is really exciting. I found your blog and now I get to stalk you while you're abroad. (erm, did I say stalk?... I meant... keep up with. Yeah...)
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