Last Friday we celebrated Jeremy’s graduation. The ceremony was only a small piece of the proceedings, which also included an elaborate (and tasty!) Dean’s Reception and the ceremony for induction into Beta Gamma Sigma, the business honorary society. There was also the university-wide graduation on Saturday morning at the Big House, featuring CNN’s chief medical correspondent and double U-M alumnus Sanjay Gupta as the speaker, though we didn’t attend that event.
The MBA ceremony was held in the historic Hill Auditorium at 6:00 pm on Friday. Typically graduation is held in Crisler Arena, where the basketball teams play. But Crisler is undergoing renovations, so we were relegated to Hill instead. Hill is beautiful, but considerably smaller than the usual venue. As a result, each student was granted just four tickets for guests. Since there were six family members attending Jeremy’s graduation, Jeremy asked a couple of international friends if he could use their remaining tickets. In return, he baked them strawberry-rhubarb pies!
The ceremony itself was very fast, perhaps because another graduation was due to take place at Hill right afterward. The entire thing was finished in an hour and a quarter; how’s that for efficiency?! On average there was two seconds allotted to each graduate. Still, we got lots of nice photos of Jeremy in his full academic regalia. Since I don’t think there will be many other opportunities for him to wear his cap, robe and hood, we wanted to be sure to preserve the moment.
Now that the whirlwind of graduation is complete, we are thinking ahead to our next steps. Jeremy accepted a job at LinkedIn, the professional networking site, so we are moving to Silicon Valley. However, we have a month and a half before we leave Ann Arbor. We are enjoying a student-free (or nearly student-free) town now that the school year has ended. And we aim to take advantage of all that Michigan has to offer before we depart for California; we are considering a weekend trip to Grand Rapids, for example. Jeremy is joining some b-school friends for a relaxing trip to South Carolina. And we are going to California this weekend to look for housing. Meanwhile, I am continuing to work on my dissertation, and am jealous of Jeremy’s newfound (though temporary) freedom!
B-school has been quite an adventure. We are excited to move on to new adventures, but we will miss Ann Arbor. We can’t wait to come back for reunion!
