By Name

From Jennifer L. Holberg

It’s almost graduation day at the college where I teach. Classes are just about over, exams are looming, and thoughts of summer plans are providing at least some small measure of mental encouragement for those of us on the faculty to keep tackling the mountain of student work that needs grading.  

Despite the craziness of the season, I actually really love graduation. I like volunteering at the senior picnic and seeing my students with their delighted families. I like meeting the parents and siblings, cousins and aunts and grandparents, and I like seeing their reaction when they find out that I’m “that” professor (and that I look more normal than they had imagined). I like putting on my gaudy “Husky Purple” robe (go, University of Washington!) and my funky Ye Olde English Hogwarts tam, even if, as I often joke, I most resemble the grape from the Fruit of the Loom gang in my get-up. I like assembling with my colleagues, all snazzily dressed up as well, and marching in to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance,” even if I do feel badly every year for the band, forced to repeat the song 87 times. It is, no doubt, a mark of my rapidly accelerating middle age, but I have to admit I get sentimental and a little verklempt every year.  

And there’s one other thing.

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