Last Friday marked the final day of the
University of Essex experience for the 2014 graduates of the School of Philosophy and Art History. Three years of rushing to meet deadlines and of an overwhelming
exams’ stress at the end of every year are now over. The long journeys to
London to visit galleries, the sounds of the projectors during seminars, the
persistence to make it for 9 am lectures after a night, and the late evenings writing
essays in the library are now things of the past. They will nevertheless soon
be replaced by the regular morning alarm and job applications.
Although it started raining in the morning, the
weather quickly shifted to a sultry summer heat, which graduates and their
parents enjoyed on the square throughout the celebration. Having been living
like a hermit for the past month whilst writing my dissertation, it was very
refreshing to see some of my friends graduating.
Music and barbecues were on the menu and as a
frontrunner I got to enjoy this particular atmosphere whilst taking some
pictures of joyful moments. I was wandering around campus in between
photographing and congratulating until a bell rang calling this vast crew to
make their way to the graduate ceremony. Streamed on the university website, I
was glad I could see what my ceremony would be like. Sitting under the shades
of the Pagoda I sat with a few others watching Prof. Wayne giving a very
insightful speech before graduates were called and went up to shake the hand of
the chancellor.
Following the ceremony, which took place in the
Ivory Crew Lecture Hall, graduates and parents gathered at the SPAH marquee in
Wivenhoe Park to enjoy the warm weather and share a drink with their - now -
former lecturers. Refreshments and food were provided to congratulate and
celebrate the success of the students. Perhaps a little bit nostalgic but
nevertheless embedded with a sense of completion, the atmosphere in the tent
was very cheerful and convivial.
Already, I could feel that the graduates will
soon miss their university life and the communal sense the campus has got. The
little things such as Campus Cat waiting to be stroked in the Tony Rich Teaching Centre, the paternoster of the Albert Sloman library and its check
point will always bring a smile to those who came here to study. Memories of the
sport centre and its “blades” whose students’ passion embraced on Derby Day, the
sport federation’s nights every Wednesday, Art Exchange and its private views
where students and lecturers gathered together to speak about art, will be
dearly missed by those who now enter “the real world.”
Once prizes and speeches were finished,
students made their way outside for the famous hat throw, the final and maybe
last moment of their University life. I was glad to see that postgraduate students
still came for their graduation even a year after they finished their program.
It galvanized me to make sure that I will be able to attend mine next year
where I will be standing there wearing black, red and white throwing my hat in
the air a second time.
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