Recently, I attended a relative's graduation commencement ceremony at a smaller school out in the central Midwest. It was one of three ceremonies taking place that day; we had been lucky enough that our relative had been assigned the earliest morning slot, and thus ensured parking was readily available close by.
I could understand the student that is excited enough about their graduation that they actually remember some of what was said before they walked up the stage to get their diploma and handshake. I could even understand a particularly enthused parent. As for myself, I remember almost nothing, and I'd expect about eighty to ninety percent of that room didn't, either.
What struck me kind of funny, though, was the sheer lack of pretense amongst this audience of friends and family. A commencement ceremony is almost always a little boring and stuffy, but these adults sitting around me could barely hold it together, chatting throughout, on their phones, taking calls in the middle of it.
I don't think I actually care so much about this, in the sense of the respect for decorum. We shouldn't hold onto tradition just for the sake of tradition, there should be an underlying purpose of it, and the commencement ceremony seemed to genuinely go through its motions and try to shuffle everyone out of there in a reasonable manner. When the parents heard their kids' names as they walked, they shouted and danced with such infectious jubilation, and to that end, the ceremony was beautiful.
Still, it was the impatience of all that preceded it that drives my interest now.
Surely it's the phones, and also the content that molds itself to that distraction. Phones and other digital devices get things instantly, make you feel things and get you that dopamine rush faster than any illicit snort could. But it also made me wonder how events like these might change in the future. Every day, there is something new that will (attempt to) deliver us faster gratification. Projects that could take days or weeks by hand are now enticingly at our fingertips, able to be (supposedly) conjured in minutes. How can a stodgy, standardized ceremony like a commencement not adapt to these changing tides?
Or maybe it's always been like this with these crowds. The graduation ceremony inside a stadium is only a recent phenomenon, and previous ceremonies were smaller and much more focused on the ritualist aspects. (D. Joshua Taylor, the author of that linked article, is specifically looking at a study of Wisconsin high school ceremonies in the 1930s there, and calls out the focus on "invocation and benediction", which of course would be lost on the more secular audiences of today.)
I look forward to how this ceremony will change in the future. Ultimately, impatience or not, I hope that the ceremony's true purpose, to celebrate the accomplishments of our graduating student population, is neither lost nor disrespected.
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