UGA Graduation 2023

I got an email telling me that my library privileges have officially been revoked, so I guess that means it's official: I've graduated!

I'm really sad about my lack of library privileges, but I've graduated.

I didn't go to graduation but that doesn't mean we didn't celebrate! Graduation happened to fall on our anniversary, so we'll count our anniversary celebrations as my graduation celebration as well. 

To make things really official, I asked on the Buy Nothing Group if anyone had some robes I could borrow and a neighbour responded that he happened to have his daughter's robes in a closet at home—along with her mortar board and tassels (from UGA's education program, so they were even the right colour!). It seemed like a perfect fit, so I borrowed them...

Now, am I missing the Master's hood? Yes.

Did I know I was supposed to put both tassels on the hat? No. 

Was the robe sized for someone between 5'1" and 5'3"? Yes.

Am I even close to being between 5'1" and 5'3"? Not really, no. 

But, if you ignore all of that (and only take pictures from the waist up), I looked like a real-life graduate! So I prettied my family up and then dragged them out into the woods to take family pictures by some rusted-out tractor bits. Naturally.

Here I am holding the books I analyzed in my thesis:

And here I am holding Phoebe, who is dressed in Alexander's Duke robes (which are also way too small for her):

And because I'm a sucker for a good throwback, here are some other graduation babies:

Andrew with Alexander in May 2018:

Andrew with Miriam in June 2010:

And Andrew with Rachel in April 2008:

Poor Benjamin missed Andrew's April 2012 graduation...but only by like 6.5 weeks (though it should have been more like 14 weeks)! See how relaxed we look in this picture, with our baby growing safely inside my belly (and nary a grey hair in sight)? I'm about 90% positive that June 2012 is when I started going grey.

Zoë also missed out on a graduation photo because she was born smack-dab in the middle of Andrew's PhD program, so we don't quite count her as a graduation baby (but we should probably make her wear the teensy graduation robes just for kicks one of these days, especially considering that Zoë was still only two years old when Andrew graduated from Duke (though she was just about three by the time he walked)).

And to really give a throw-back, here's a picture from my BYU graduation back in...whenever it was that I walked...August 2005 (I believe):

You can tell it was a long time ago because this image is a scan of an actual photograph that was developed from film—the same way cavemen made pictures!

It feels good to be moving forward, however the future ends up looking. 

I took the kids to the library on Tuesday and found a book called Two Tribes (by Emily Bowen Cohen, published in August 2023—probably around the same time I was defending my thesis), about a Muskogee-Jewish girl. I checked it out and read it and it was delightful and I have thoughts about it that I want to scream from the rooftops (or at least write something about). So, apparently I'm not as exhausted from my thesis topic as I thought. It was a wonderful little read!

Today I hopped onto JMLE to check the status of a paper of mine that had been accepted and—lo!—it's up and ready! And that feels pretty great (even if the paper in its final form is a picked-apart-by-reviewers and reassembled-by-Doctor-Frankenstein creation)!