Is it May yet?

I'm sitting in my favorite café in Berkeley - Café Milano. It's becoming a Saturday tradition that Erin and I come here on the Mills Shuttle and sit for several hours while we try to make a dent in our weekly freighter-load of homework. I just finished about 120 pages of a book for my "Race, Sexuality, and the State" class - I like to do the reading for the whole week instead of just for Monday on the weekends, because otherwise between Monday and Wednesday I'm facing sixty pages of reading that - along with algebra homework, going to the gym, tutoring, etc. - I do not have time for. But that does mean that I force my brain through a lot words on the weekend. 120 pages of sentences like:

"In this melding of household status, racial purity, and transactional rights to property and contract, the concept of normativity was deployed as an anti-democratic tactic to restrain the viability of the border intimacies forged by heterogeneous association." (Stranger Intimacy by Nayan Shah, p. 125)

 As you can imagine, my brain is rather tired after all that. But what I really wanted to write to you guys about today was Convocation. It was fantastic.

We went to the free breakfast that I mentioned and met up with a few other friends. After a while (since we had gotten there a bit early), we were done eating but nothing was happening yet, so the four of us (Erin and myself along with Carly ((a math friend)) and Karis ((a friend of Carly's)) ) decided to go and play a game of pool while we waited for the actual events to begin. The room with the pool table is right next to the room where breakfast was being served, so we could hear through the wall when someone made an announcement about lining up to start the ceremony. We walked back around to the main door to see what was going on and ended up standing at what was the beginning of the line of "the class of 2013".  I was right in the front and eventually, a lady who knew what was going on instructed me to start following her and so I did! We walked across the meadow in the middle of our campus and waited as everything was being organized. In the meantime, I met up and joked with more friends (there will be pictures!) and then we heard the music start playing and we were lead to our seats.

As all of the graduating seniors filed into the seats saved for us, there were people sitting around us - younger students as well as some family members who had come to see the ceremony. They cheered as we came in and we cheered as the faculty filed in (in their amazing academic robes... wow.) and then we cheered even harder as the visiting Mills alumni came in. They walked holding banners that showed the year in which they graduated from Mills, and do you know what? There was one graduate from the class of 1942 - a single old woman, marching proudly with her banner and going to sit in the front row. There were several from the class of 1947, and then some from '52, '72, '82 and '92 -- and the biggest contingent was from '62, since this year those graduates are being welcomed in to the Golden Girls club, coming to their 50th reunion. 

After that, the actual program started. Speeches by people in student government, some by the Provost of the college, a bit from the President of the college, etc.  And it was interesting and even funny! Awards were presented to some students as well as some faculty, including Dr. Burke, my film professor this semester and Christian Marouby, French professor and my adviser during my first three semesters as well as the one who supervised all of my study abroad applications last year. Both of them mean so much to me and both of them are retiring after this year, and I had tears in my eyes as they stood up to receive their awards.

I just looked across the table at Erin here and we were talking about how much fun Convocation has been and she summed up my feelings rather well (as well as her own). "You know," she said, "It made me feel very proud to be a part of Mills, which is not something I feel often." I couldn't agree more. I don't often feel like a "Mills Woman", as the phrase goes - and I don't often think that it is important to feel so, I don't notice the community much. But with generations of graduates, my fellow students, and professors who have guided me these past years all around me, I felt so very much like I belonged. And I sang our Alma Mater with more conviction than I ever thought I would.

However, one of the consequences of parading around in a graduation robe and cheering with the fellow seniors is simply this: I want to graduate NOW. I feel like I already have! Convincing myself after that to take off the robe, go back to my room and continue studying for my algebra exam yesterday was no easy feat. Convocation is kind of a tease, but it's one I'm very glad I was a part of.

There are several pictures I would like to show you from Convocation, but the internet in this café isn't fast enough for that, so I will post them later this evening or tomorrow.  Be excited!