I'm almost sympathetic, but not quite

In a city with a relatively limited change in seasons, I've found the best way to tell that spring has arrived is the sudden increase in middle-aged people taking photos of the University library. That's because it's graduation time. A chance for proud parents to exact revenge for the near-bankruptcy that educating their offspring has reduced them to by witnessing that most brutal of archaic rituals, The Graduation Ceremony.

Under any other circumstances, the usual response to having completed four years of dull, passionless but fairly unchallenging lectures is to go to the pub, round up a few slappers and then move on with life. In academia though, we like to celebrate by making everyone sit through one last excruciatingly tedious lecture given by some preposterous old bore with one foot in the grave and a catheter stashed under his robes (it's always a male). He'll probably harp on about 'coming of age', 'preparation for the years ahead' and something about 'lifelong bonds of friendship'. I suspect that they all use exactly the same speach, but nobody's noticed because nobody ever listens.

Here at A Well Known Public University in Southern California this is all done outside, in the searing heat of LA in June, whilst wearing a long, flowing polyester sack. Do you honestly think Anne Bancroft would have gone anywhere near Dustin Hoffman's stench if he'd been wearing nylon robe and mortar board for three hours? I don't. To add to the insult, the Alumni Society are no doubt on hand to sign people up so that in the unlikely event that they make anything of their lives, the University can beg them for cash in twenty years time. I'm almost tempted to feel sorry for the graduates, but then it says something that after four years of higher education they can't present their parents with a cogent argument for non-attendance.

Most of the other US Universities have already finished, because they're on semesters whereas we're on UK style academic calender. We have three ten-week terms a year, so we call it 'the quarter system'. I have no idea why.