<p>What can you skip? All of it! Any of it! You won’t, though.</p>
<p>The University of Chicago Convocation is so colossally boring, it’s a national treasure. It’s like a little survival of the old world in the midst of modernity. Nothing is done for anyone’s convenience or entertainment.</p>
<p>The way I think it goes now is this: </p>
<p>The day before has a couple of lame events. Class Day has a funny faculty speaker being intermittently funny, some bad singing by singing groups not at full strength, some really terrible dancing by the kind of dancers who go the the University of Chicago and aren’t someplace else, and a lot of jejune stuff by fraternity and sorority members that you won’t get, or care to, and your kid may appreciate if he or she was in a fraternity or sorority, and that will otherwise probably annoy your kid. (One of mine walked out of hers because of this.) You can go to that or not. There’s also some kind of dessert reception at the Museum of Science and Industry. Not only did I not go for any of my Convocations; I don’t think I have ever spoken to anyone who has gone to it. (It’s probably the highlight of the weekend.) </p>
<p>In the morning, you “line up” to get seats where you can see anything at 6:30. There are maybe a couple hundred of those; everyone else’s seat sucks. There’s no organized line, just a surly, sleepy crowd or two, followed by a jailbreak. If you come at 7:30, you may not get a seat at all, and if you do it certainly won’t be in unassisted-visual range of anything. If you can figure out which aisle your kid is going to walk down, and you are close enough to be able to take an unobstructed picture as he or she walks by, that’s a great seat.</p>
<p>Then you sit around doing absolutely nothing for hours. It rains, hard. It’s cold. The sun comes out and burns you. It rains again. Everything is soaked.</p>
<p>Hours late, and about when it can’t get any worse, a massive academic parade begins, complete with the pipers you remember from when you dropped your kid off 45 months before. The faculty are great to watch because they are all wearing gowns of the institutions where they got their doctorates, but that’s over fast. Everyone else is more or less dressed the same. The b-school grads have great haircuts.</p>
<p>A bunch of people talk, at some length. None of them are famous, because the University of Chicago does not do outside speakers for Convocation. If you listen closely, some of it is interesting. If it’s not raining too hard, there is some kind of musical component that you can’t hear too well, but based on my experience don’t worry about that, because it will be raining too hard. Everyone sings the University’s nondescript alma mater, which no one knows. (I have a great memory for melody and lyrics, and I have heard it and sung it numerous times, and I doubt I would recognize it if I heard it again. I sure can’t remember any of it.) There is some kind of token mass conferral of degrees, and honorary degrees are conferred. Some faculty prizes are announced.</p>
<p>Then everyone leaves and has a box lunch somewhere. It used to be based on which division your kid’s primary concentration was in. So you had to check whether it was in Humanities, Biological Sciences, Social Sciences, or Physical Sciences. Or New Collegiate, which is there so you don’t get complacent and think it’s obvious which division houses your kid’s major. If you were lucky, you got to meet a few of your kid’s profs, and have them talk down to you (but at least say nice things about your kid, so you were happy). But that’s the old days; now I think lunch is doled out alphabetically. If you hang out near where the appropriate division’s graduate degree ceremonies are going to be, you may still be able to have faculty talk down to you.</p>
<p>Then the real fun begins. You go back to the seating area. Everyone sits someplace else, because hardly anyone bothers to save their crappy seats from the morning. The grad students and faculty are all somewhere else. One by one, each kid’s name is read – and, more often than not, but not by much, pronounced correctly – and he or she has about seven seconds to walk across the stage, get a diploma, shake a few hands, and that’s that. Times 1,500. It takes three hours and change. Completely charming and utterly boring at the same time. If you are a professional sports photographer with a telephoto lens that would make Harry Reems blush, you may be able to get a good picture. Otherwise, don’t get your hopes up, except as noted below.</p>
<p>It goes alphabetically by division (Biological Sciences first, Social Sciences last), and within the division by major, and within the major by name. The class marshals are taken out of order, but I can’t remember where. If your last name is Zuckerberg, and your kid is a sociology major, you are pretty screwed, except that you will be able to move up and get a great seat or photography perch for the big moment, because no one else will be there anymore. As the kids in the early-alphabet divisions and majors get their papers, they tend to fade into the general population, like the Iraqi army during Desert Storm. Many of them, and their parents, depart.</p>
<p>At the end, there is another parade with the pipers, this one much smaller and scragglier than the one in the morning. But the pipers are the pipers, and that’s cool. </p>
<p>You spend what’s left of the afternoon trying to move your kid out of wherever he or she has been living for a year. You deal with your kid’s post-graduation depression and bad mood, and you go out to dinner somewhere, hopefully with some friends and other parents to keep everyone on decent behavior. You need to make reservations, but Chicago is a big city, so the University of Chicago convocation doesn’t make that much of a dent in the restaurant capacity. (It might if you were trying to eat a nice meal in Hyde Park, but you’re not; by now you know that’s a quixotic endeavor.)</p>
<p>What should you bring? Stuff to read. A fully charged phone. Rain gear and extra layers. Sunscreen. </p>
<p>What should you do? Meet your neighbors. They are fun to talk to. Cheer for their kids, too. Analyze the program fifteen different ways. What majors have the greatest percentage of double majors? What percentage of the class got general honors? Departmental honors? What majors are more popular than you thought? Why, exactly, is math a physical science? Something seems wrong about that . . . .</p>
