so… shpakOO’s feature adventure at Yale begins today…
Having decided to skip an official pre-ceremony breakfast, instead I slept for an additional 45 min, and then so rested and ready for a brand new day I arrived in New Haven. Amazingly: I got out of my car at the med school long before the ceremony even started despite some random traffic clots and detours en route…
The weather was perfect. Bright blue sky, a fresh breeze carrying a scent of a freshly baked bread from a nearby Lupi’s… I got to wear my new casual ensemble featuring a fuzzy, honey-brown sports jacket … Slightly unwisely, since the sun ended up pretty strong … but I guess there is never a bad day to look good, so… the ensemble killed.
I arrived at the Sprague Hall just in time to notice 492 other matriculants and their families entering the building, directed by a few cops… I guess the procession started after the breakfast was over, which i purposefully omitted, and it was now at its final destination: the Hall. While climbing the stairs to the auditorium I was handed in a program. The first thing i did after taking a seat was to verify that it indeed listed my name (spelled correctly) together with the rest of new grads… YAY ME 🙂
The speeches of the President of school, and the Dean of graduate studies were electrifying with optimism, elloquence, happiness… The major themes included the search for unknown, science being the boundary between what’s murky and what’s in a text book, science not being an accident but rather a sustained intellectual effort and a sustained pursuit of explenations of a captivating phenomenon… Amids all that a neat cello/piano duet was smuggled in… Variations on One String based on an aria from a rather obscure opera by Paganini: “Moses”, composed by Rossini… The perfect sync between the two musicians was just astounding when one realizes how irregular that piece was… And the breadth of timbre that the cellist was able to pull out that one string was just hott…
After the ceremony, it was time to move to a reception banquet, in the President’s historical mansion, where the President and Dean officially welcomed all 493 of us with a hearty handshake, lemonade and cookies…
It is the lemonade that got me in trouble with the Union (again)… So I attempted to refill my glass with the liquid sitting in the gigantic vase sitting on a table, on the meadow… I reach for the ladle, as there is nobody else around to do it for me, (not that i think i would need help
with that otherwise)… and then somebody yells at me that i’m “stealing their job, stop this instance” … so obviously i froze, dropped the ladle back into the vase, and allowed my cup to be filled by an official person devoted to that task there, appologizing for my horrible misbehaviour… That’s strike two with the Union… Strike one was when my temporary position extended kindda indeffinitelly, but thats another story…
I have a strange feeling that they are watching me, and that the strike three will get me concrete shoes and a trip to the bottom of Long Island Sound…
time for tea,
~shpakOO
P.S. how the heck does one REMOVE photos once they are added to this blog’s entry?