The beginning is near

	James Hilston, Post-Gazette Click illustration for larger image.

I know what you're wondering this morning. You're wondering why I'm looking out over a sea of young faces peering into the future with a mixture of hope and heartfelt boredom. My black gown and silly hat with the tassel swinging in my face should be a dead giveaway. I'm here to address the Class of '05.

Dear graduates and distinguished readers of The Morning File: It's an honor to stand before you today. For you -- and this might strike you as odd but think about it -- for you, this is a beginning not an end. You are about to embark on the next leg of that series of connecting flights we call life. You have already faced the first difficult decision of adulthood -- whether to show up for this speech. Those of you who chose to be here have absorbed one of life's great lessons: We learn from our mistakes . . .

Seriously, though

Not only do today's graduates show up for graduation, but -- get this -- they care deeply about who the speaker is. At least they do at Rice University in Houston. Graduating seniors managed to control their disappointment Saturday when psych prof Michelle Hebl became the first Rice faculty member to deliver the commencement address. The seniors were miffed because previous classes had heard from former presidents Bush, Carter, and Reagan, author Kurt Vonnegut and comedian Bill Cosby and took the choice of Hebl as a slap in the mortarboard. This intense reaction will shock those of you who can't remember whether you attended graduation, let alone who spoke and what he or she said. Chalk it up to yet another instance of celebrityism infecting the culture. With a typical commencement speaker's fee of between $25,000 and $35,000, a Rice official told The Christian Science Monitor, you could hire an assistant professor for a year. (Did he say a year? No wonder Ph.D.s are driving taxis.)

Mortar bored

Students at New York University felt the pain of their Rice counterparts. They requested Maya Angelou, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jon Stewart among other celebs. Instead, they got Princeton President Shirley Tilghman, who may give a good speech but will never be confused with Oprah, the top choice for commencement speaker nationwide.

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Sam Allis, Boston Globe columnist, was at his daughter's NYU graduation: "The real reason universities hold graduations is to start the lifelong dunning process for dough. These seniors are already locked into some development office computer as money minnows. With luck and constant prodding, they'll morph into cash cows. NYU already had the gall to hit the parents of graduating seniors for money. This after soaking us for $42,000 for an anemic academic year.

"Graduation ceremonies are generically awful. There is nothing remotely new to say about life on such occasions. As the hot air envelops the room, parents use cell phones to locate their offspring, and then descend upon them with digital video recorders like budding Soderberghs bound for Sundance. My daughter never answered her cell, raising the possibility that she wasn't there at all. Don't laugh. A friend tells of a graduation exercise at the University of Montana where his daughter was, in fact, splayed on the grass outside nursing a hangover. My daughter later says the ceremonies were interminable, so she must have been there."

Sound familiar?

From the Boston Herald: "'Tis the season for commencement addresses, so allow us to add our two cents' worth of graduation wisdom. But rather than a Top 10 list of advice, we have, in fact, just one small bit for those newly freed from their undergraduate and graduate studies: Stay in Boston. The battle of the reports about youth flight from the area long has been joined with Mayor Thomas M. Menino insisting it ain't so, and others, notably the Boston Foundation, insisting it is. The foundation has the facts on its side and the reality that Massachusetts was the only state to LOSE population according to the U.S. census in 2004 is proof enough that sitting on our Boston Marathon laurels isn't an option. . ."

Graduate history

So why the silly tasseled hats? Blame it on those medieval frat boys. The in style back then was the shaved head. (It wasn't fraternity hazing, but Ockham's Razor, as philosophy students know.) To keep themselves warm in the drafty classrooms, they wore tight-fitting skull caps. The tassel was an add-on for easy cap removal. Other facts brought to you by the American-Statesman in Austin, Texas:

A tassel is worn on the right before a degree is conferred, then moved left briefly before the mortarboard is flung into the air.

"Pomp and Circumstance" debuted as a recession tune at Yale University in 1905. Composer Edward Elgar received an honorary doctorate of music at the ceremony.

One more limerick

Chris Doyle from oedilf.com, The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form:
The degrees I received were advanced,
With diplomas so fancy I danced
At commencement that day
(Ph.D., MBA).
All that pomp left me well circumstanced.