A couple of worn paths in the grass
Is the only trace of Commencement available on the Quad. Because of all the foot traffic, there are some worn, brownish spaces, but everything else is as neat and tidy as it ever was.
It was interesting for me to see a Commencement at another school. My nephew graduated from Villanova in PA and it really was a lovely ceremony. They had individual school graduations on Saturday (where you saw the student walk on stage and shake hands with the dean of their school) and on Sunday they had the large Commencement where they officially conferred degrees (each group stood up by school to be recognized, but no one walked - just too big).
As lovely as the Villanova commencement was, I still much preferred ours : ) It is wonderful to see every undergraduate student walk the stage, and the setting for ours is simply superior. I doubt highly there is a prettier Quad in the nation than ours.
I kept track of our Commencement through my friends here and have looked at the photo galleries on Window on Wake Forest (www.wfu.edu/wowf) If you have not done so, please check it out. I have heard exceptionally good things about our Baccalaureate speaker. Her speech is not online, but I hope it will be. She was getting rave reviews.
One change to Commencement this year was to have screens on the back half of the Quad (on the Reynolda Hall side). This was to allow families seated in the back half to see their children as they walked the stage. It is something we have long wanted to do, and this year we were able. Though I was not here, I heard good things about the screens.
Glad to be back on campus again. Will have some interesting things to blog about in the coming days - how’s that for a teaser? Check back!