Letter from Boston Commencement By MASAKO YAMADA	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
卒業式 日本では、まだ一学期が始まって3ヵ月目ですが、アメリカでは今が卒業式シーズンです。今年は、ボストン大学の同じ研究室で勉強していた仲間が5人も同時に博士号を修了するというので、雅子さんも、卒業式に出てお祝いをしました。アメリカの大学の卒業式はどのように行なわれるのでしょうか。

I've mentioned before that my research group is very large. It is the largest research group in the department, and I'd be willing to bet that it's one of the largest in the United States. Almost everybody I talk to seems surprised at the size of our group. A simple look at this year's commencement program hints at the group's size: Five people from the group of Gene Stanley received their doctorate degrees this year. Most professors train one student every few years.

I went to part of the commencement ceremonies because so many people from my group were getting their degrees. Getting a doctorate requires even more commitment than getting a bachelor's degree, so I wanted to be there to congratulate my friends. However, I did not want to participate in all of the commencement ceremonies.

Boston University is an extremely large university, so this commencement did not have the cozy feel that my undergraduate commencement did. At Wellesley, chairs were lined up in one of the courtyards, and a temporary stage was set up. All of the names of the graduates were called out, and each student walked up to the stage to get her diploma. Speeches, sermons and congratulations were given by many, and the graduates and guests did not move until the ceremony was over.

At BU, commencement is broken up into little chunks. First, there is a university-wide ceremony at the football field with a famous orator (Henry Kissinger this year) giving the keynote speech. Then, students break up into their departments and go to smaller auditoriums. More speeches are given by department affiliates. Finally, just for doctoral students there is a special hooding ceremony in which the students get their hoods and diplomas.

I decided to go only to the hooding ceremony, since I didn't want to dedicate my entire day to commencement. Although it was raining quite hard that day, the hooding ceremony was very nice. There were a couple of speeches, but they were short.

The main attraction was watching the students get their diplomas. All of the students lined up in alphabetical order with their advisors next to them. Each student and his or her advisor went up on stage. The advisor had the task of putting the hood on the student. While watching this symbolic move, I imagined the different kinds of relationships these students and professors must have had over the years.

My advisor, who would have had to go up on stage five times, happened to be out of town that day. Therefore, other professors in our department served as proxies for him. My advisor has probably gone through the routine almost 40 times, but it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the students, so it was too bad that he couldn't be there.

I might have made the ceremony sound much more solemn than it was. In fact, it was a pretty casual affair. Parents rushed up to the stage to take pictures of their children as they got their hoods. Friends lined up by the sidelines to wave and cheer.

It was fun to watch the interaction between the students and their guests. One of my friends had relatives fly in from New York, South Carolina and England. Another had just his wife in the audience, while another one — an international student — had just his friends from the department. I missed seeing one of my groupmates at the ceremony. All of his relatives are abroad as well, so it seemed he didn't feel it was worth going through the formalities.

After the hooding ceremony was over, people crowded into an adjacent tent for champagne and refreshments. The refreshments were actually pretty luxurious, and I helped myself to fried scallops and shrimp cocktail. I talked to my friends who had just gotten their diplomas, and I met some of their family members.

I noticed that many of the families were busy talking to advisors, and I realized that for many, commencement is the only opportunity to meet the advisor. This made it all the more unfortunate that Gene wasn't there. However, my friends seemed much too busy, relieved and/or tired to complain. They had finally gotten their diplomas.

Shukan ST: June 11, 1999

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