<p>For Mwfn and all other parents whose daughters will graduate this year, please give us your impressions and run-down on the ceremonies. It's so much fun to share the excitement and joy with you;</p>
<p>Lost in translat, good idea! I guess I thought your daughter was a senior. What year is she?</p>
<p>Will do! I just looked at the 10 day forecast, though, and it’s supposed to rain on Ivy Day. :(</p>
<p>It seems it almost always rains on one day or another. We mostly lucked out…it rained the evening of Ivy Day, washing out Illumination. Ivy Day in the Quad was gorgeous…we didn’t even notice any keg parties designed to attract students from Amherst or Zoo Mass…and graduation itself was perfect, down to the bagpipe band that led off the proceedings. Though if I ever retire, I would like to become the Country Marshal who carries the Mace.</p>
<p>I’m going to be so disappointed if the weather ruins Illumination! Everyone, start praying for excellent weather for us, and I’ll do the same for you when your time comes. :)</p>
<p>Hope the weather works out well for any of you attending Illumination or Commencement this year. I graduated from Smith 30 years ago and I also remember a mixed weather weekend. Ivy Day and Illumination were gorgeous. The day of Commencement started out overcast but the administration chose to keep the ceremony outdoors in the Quad and it seemed like as soon as we got our caps and gowns on the skies just opened. There we were sitting row after row with rain dumping down on us during the ceremony. No umbrellas for us. Our class was perhaps the largest ever to graduate from Smith (about 780) and so the ceremony was quite long. (Maya Angelou was our graduation speaker). Our mortarboards warped like so many pagodas that day!</p>
<p>Maya Angelou!!! SO jealous (mine was a smithie congresswoman, still pretty good but not Maya f’ing Angelou!) </p>
<p>It rained early in the morning of mycommencement, but it cleared for the actual ceremony and the worst we had was wet programs (because the programs go out on the chairs early).</p>
<p>CarolynB, my daughter is a rising senior, so will graduate next year. I still haven’t figured out how I’m going to make it though, unless I can find a compassionate doctor who will give me a couple of days of sick leave…</p>
<p>The weather forecast looks a lot more promising now! </p>
<p>LiT, you’ll have to find a way! If you can get Friday off for travel, you’ll be state-side by Friday afternoon. Commencement is on Sunday morning, with lunch afterward. If you take the usual night flight home, you’ll arrive in France on Monday before 9 am. It may sound crazy, but it’s doable. (This comes from the person who flew to Hawaii from the East Coast for a long weekend. 
)</p>
<p>Congratulations to anyone with a graduate or graduating today!</p>
<p>I second overwhelmedma’s sentiments. The congratulations are well deserved!</p>
<p>Too late to wish you all well in advance…silly West Coast time zone. Anyway, I hope it all went beautifully for everyone. And dryly.</p>
<p>Congratulations, or as we say over here: toutes mes f</p>
<p>Graduation weekend did go off dryly! Ivy Day was cool and windy – but the sun beamed down with enough strength to burn many shoulders. Commencement Day was much more pleasant, with warmer temperatures, less wind, and, other than an ominous black sky that moved over just as Rachel Maddow was about to speak, sunny.</p>
<p>The whole weekend was jammed pack with stuff to do. Smith did an excellent job of making the weekend more than just a diploma event.</p>
<p>Momwaitingfornew, as I sat at Commencement, I thought of you being somewhere in the audience and how proud you were, and wondering which neuroscience major your daughter was. I am delighted the weather was essentially cooperative the whole weekend and the festivities were meaningful and fun. Congratulations again to your daughter. That chapter is closed, and now it’s on to Pitt!</p>
<p>I’m so glad the weather was on your side! Congratulations on having a Smith graduate. If you have time, tell us what the best parts were for you :)</p>
<p>The whole weekend was great, but I’ll summarize:</p>
<p>I thoroughly enjoyed the Ivy Day parade and convocation. Victoria McClure (she received an honorary degree the next day) spoke about going from Sophomore Push to “tough old bird” (hardly old – she was celebrating her 25th reunion) and was as witty and fun as Rachel Maddow, though on a smaller scale. The only disappointment for us was D’s just miss of magna cum laude (with a GPA a hair over 3.8), though she did make Phi Beta Kappa – another great ceremony. Phi Beta Kappa conflicted with departmental receptions, so we had to miss out on all but 30 minutes of D’s, and her professors had already left. From what we saw, however, the biological sciences reception in the atrium of new Ford Hall was well attended, with good food.</p>
<p>The senior candle lighting that night by Paradise Pond was a bust, mostly because the wind kept blowing out the candles. Or maybe because it really isn’t interesting even when it works. Sophomore Push, where they sing to the seniors and then push them off the steps of the library was difficult to see. It looked like great fun for the seniors, though. And Illumination Night was impressive with the multi-colored paper lanterns lighting up the upper campus. Staff members had to scurry around re-lighting them because of the wind, and a couple of them apparently burst into flame, but mostly they worked. We enjoyed walking down the paths flanked by all the swaying Chinese lanterns.</p>
<p>Graduation Day started with us arriving between 8:30 and 8:45; many others brought coffee and breakfast with them. (Commencement began at 10 am; fortunately, it was a nice morning.) We got great seats right on the aisle next to the seniors. Most families tried to get center seats, but, with the inner aisle, we had no obstructions except when family members dodged the chains to take pictures or to hug their grads as they approached the senior seats or walked back from the podium. One set of grandparents arrived 20 minutes before the ceremony, however, and they saw virtually nothing of graduation, although they could hear. We were told explicitly not to save seats for others who weren’t there and that objected from unattended seats would be removed. Ha. That didn’t happen. In our section, people were “reserving” six to eight seats with impunity. When others tried to sit there, they simply said that those seats were taken.</p>
<p>The speeches were all full of energy and interesting, and they read the names so efficiently that the ceremony never felt as though it dragged. I set my 10x zoom camera on continuous and just held down the shutter as my D’s house began to get their diplomas. I appreciated the organization by house because it was easy to spot D and friends as they entered the Quad courtyard and later received their degrees.</p>
<p>They rope off the area for the diploma circle, so most cannot see it. I managed to get fairly close to the chain as people gave up, so I saw part of it. The first grad got her diploma within moments. Because my D was one of the last eight or ten, the staff removed the ropes so I and a couple dozen other parents could see the end of it. Near the end, though, chaos reigned. My D was handed her diploma not by another student but by a dean.</p>
<p>Buffet lunches in the houses following graduation were decent. Not great, but adequate.</p>
<p>Fortunately, I had made dinner reservations for all three nights in advance, based on the schedule of events, so we had no hitches there: Thai Garden the first night (D’s request); Spoleto’s on Saturday, and the Montague Night Kitchen on Sunday. I’m kinda sad that we didn’t get a last stab at Osaka, but none of the grandparents like Japanese.</p>
<p>The Autumn Inn is the shabbiest $300/per night (about) hotel you’ll ever see, but it paid for itself in convenience. We didn’t have to worry about parking and could easily walk to the Quad for Ivy Day and Commencement.</p>
<p>And packing? Well, on Friday, my D said that she was “almost finished.” My husband and I exchanged knowing glances. He and my mother went up to see while I stayed with the others. When my husband returned, he said that it “wasn’t bad” and might take two more hours. My mother held up four fingers behind him. By the time Monday morning rolled around, not everything was packed. However, with husband, mother, and me working with her, we managed to get her out, with room cleaned, in 1 hr 45 min. Not bad considering the past! But of course, we had one extra set of hands this time around.</p>
<p>Senior week and graduation weekend does an excellent job of cementing the bonds among classmates and beyond, to alumnae. For many seniors, the weekend was their first glimpse of the enduring loyalty to the college and their part as alumnae.</p>
<p>EDITED TO ADD: Some “summary”!</p>
<p>That’s exactly the kind of summary I like. Thanks again, Mwfn, and give my best wishes to your brillant daughter for grad school (or not, if she, like my D, makes rude noises at any mention of CC). Please promise that you’ll come back occasionally to visit old friends.
Btw, can you give us the 2010 cut-off for magna and summa?</p>
<p>Momwaitingfornew, thank you for your lovely detailed summary; it was very satisfying to read. I have been wondering what the Sophomore Push was, so thanks for the explanation. Good idea to make reservations for dinner, although I thought you really couldn’t do that per se at Spoleto’s, only contact them a 1/2 hour before you want to eat. I have a similar question that Lost in translat has: where do you get the information about various Latin Honors cut-offs? Who tells you this stuff? Please pass on my congratulations to your daughter on receiving Latin Honors and Phi Beta Kappa! We’ll be interested in hearing how Pitt is working out for her next fall.</p>
<p>I don’t know the cut-off for magna and summa, mostly because I don’t know my D’s Latin Honors GPA. She graduated with a 3.81 overall, and the GPA took a dip because of some A-s her final semester. So, in this case, a 3.81 was cum laude. Summas have close to 4.0s – my guess is that the cut-off was something like 3.96. My guess is that the magna cut off was somewhere around 3.85.</p>
<p>Phi Beta Kappa is the top 10% of the class including first year grades; this year, including the fall inductees, 73 students were elected. As you know, Latin Honors are different since they are calculated without those first year grades and are based on the top percentages. Only nine students (out of 736) got summa. Thirty-one were magnas. The students don’t know whether they’ve received Latin Honors (and which one) until they read the program at the Ivy Day Awards Convocation. </p>
<p>As for Spoleto, I, too, thought that I couldn’t make reservations; however, when I called just to make sure, I found out that they were taking them for graduation weekend. Six weeks before graduation, the only times still remaining were 5 pm and 9 pm, so we took the early one. Just a note: hotels in the area require a three-day stay, often paid in advance, and rates are at least double what they normally are. Reservations open about 12-14 months before graduation, and the Northampton hotels (Autumn Inn and Northampton Inn) fill up quickly despite the jacked-up prices and requirements that you pay in full at that time. My in-laws stayed at the Holiday Inn in Westfield for considerably less than we had to shell out; however, they had a 20 minute drive, then had to park in the Smith garage and catch a shuttle to the Quad area for the two ceremonies.</p>
<p>Sophomore push is both an activity and a designation for the group of sophomores who volunteer to help at graduation and reunions. The juniors who stay are ushers. I’m sure some real Smithies will chime in to explain further.</p>