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Laudatory honors

That's me up at the podium. (I got to give a speech.)

They line us up by major and in alphabetical order before we process behind a bagpiper out into the hall. By virtue of the alphabet, I'm next to Ratso. The departmental secretary bustles around, passing out little cards, with our names and any laudatory honors for the dean to read as we cross the stage, and arranging our hoods so that the school colors are properly displayed. When Humility Boy (all his regalia is fearfully disordered) asks her if she'll miss us, she rolls her eyes and says, "Well, yes, but maybe now I can get some work done!"

Ratso shows me his name card, with his name misspelled, but sort of phonetically, so he's hoping that the dean will pronounce it somewhat right. On my card, my name is spelled right, but my middle initial, which I left off the "how do you want to be called" form is there and really, I'd prefer my whole middle name to just "L", but obviously those forms were ignored. Ratso reads my card and says, "Hey, you got a sumo cum laude!"

"Hah!" I clench my hands into fists and drop into a horse stance. "Yeah, sumo cum laude. I get a special belt." (My fighting name could be Taka-no-seiseki.)

"Oh, sum-MA. What's that mean anyway? I got a magma cum laude."

Yeah, his grades were positively volcanic! Actually, all but a couple of the computer engineers had very high grades. I'm impressed with them all. (Geezer note: When I was their age, I was too flighty to have gotten through this program at all, much less with honors. It's a good thing I did languages and linguistics—at which I did quite well, thank you very much—the first time around.)

Then the piper starts playing Loch Lomond and out we go.

318 words | May 22, 2005 08:00 PM | Ivory tower