Graduation- May 2001
John was my very first good friend here at VT to graduate, and it was terribly sad to see him go and wonderfully happy at the same time to see him off :-)
I was selected to be the marshal for the undergraduates, which meant I got to organize them, and put all one hundred-something of them in alphabetical order with my handy little clipboard. I got to lead them in and show them their correct rows, and I got to lead them around row by row by row when it was time for them to take their walk of fame :-) It was quite an exciting honor for me.
What made it ever more wonderful was that where they usually have two undergrads doing this job, I was selected as the undergrad and Chris got to handle the graduate students. A nice arrangement, don't you think? Well... there were other motives!
But first... pictures in relative order. These pics were taken by Alba, who was sweet enough to not only take pictures for me with my camera, but also to take my list of photos I wanted and take every one of them for me- and more that I am SO very glad she got!! The other actually good pics come from the CS department page.
Dennis (Dr.Kafura, the department head) presents a welcome speach and the slide show.
The programming team!!! #1 in the country, #1 in North America and #2 in the world!!!!!! Yeah, I had nothing to do with it, but I'm damn proud of them! The couch was my OS teacher (er, the semester I didn't get scared away) and the assitant coach was the sweet and selfless as heck Chad Wingrave (assistant coach) who our girls at Career Day goggle over LOL! And if you notice the slide in the background.. yes, they are counting by binary.
A very sweet guy from my professionalism class, Alan Lattimer, and a guy I don't know who must be nice as well, David Cook, receive the Gorsline scholarship. Alan is a great guy and I'm glad to have known him and worked with him while he was sailing through here. He also helped out at a presentation about diveristy at a faculty meeting. He taught me all I ever needed to know about neuclear power plants and every time I eat a banana I will think of him. :-)
Scott Turner, the first of my line, who was the only one to graduate with honors... as I once hoped to do but probably won't now that I'm doing the 5 year thing. Good on him!
More awards... Ah, so now for the surprise! Sandy was very clever and asked Chris to be the graduate marshal... because she wanted to surprise him! He was getting an award for being such an excellent teacher, and asked him this way so it would be a surprise during the ceremony. Of course he had to go and ruin it, heehee, but I'm still very proud of him *G* He is a wonderful GTA and a great teacher from what I read in his student evaluations! Oh, and McQuain looks really proud and is clapping... (as is everyone else) just none of that showed up on the scan.
Pictures of me and Chris doing our jobs. Chris got to just stand there after escorting the lines around.. I had to walk back and forth a number of times... but I loved it. It was a lot of fun. The guys looking all nervous and cute in their robes... taking care of last minute walk-ins, whispering to professors on the stage and looking all official, switching clipboards and notes at the last minute, confurring with Dr.Lee over who was present and what not. Ah, it was great :-)
The left is a picture of McQuain... dressed up!!!!!!! The right is McQuain with John as he *sniffles* walks across the stage to get his diploma *sniffles* Ok, yes, I was crying quite a bit.. then again, I cry at everything. Lots of people I knew graduated... many of them grad students like Chris' friend Erik, I was sobbing when the grad students did their thing but tried remaining happy and alert doing my job when the undergrads were up and running.
Since no one else wanted to do it, Steve and Chad stepped up to the challenge of speaking for the undergrads and grads who were graduating, and they did a superb job :-) And the faculty gets up to applaud, as well.
Everyone gets up to turn their tassles. You can see me and Chris sitting in the front row.
Everyone starts filing out, and Chris and I walk up row by row to show them out. The second pic is of John walking out. :-)
