Steve Graduates

Graduayurhh...Graduaeurhh...I need sleep, i legitimately cannot function before midday and this level of presentability this early is a ridiculous demand. I luckily grabbed a lucozade before heading out, hopefully i'll have a chance to down it before the ceremony. We enter a building primarily used for swimming and gyming so i'm already out of place. I'm separated from my mum and nan and pointed towards a set of stairs. Having to switch to an independent thinking mindset i cleverly deduce i must ascend the steps in order to progress.

Next i enter a large sports hall flanked with different graduate related boards and backdrops. I fetch my gown and assorted toffery at which point someone mercifully shows me how the hell i'm meant to wear it. It feels like a dressing gown suspended in the process of falling off, which isn't good for anyone's nerves. I waft (as this is the only way one can move in these things) into an area dubbed photographs and i eventually reunite with mum and nan.

Another long wait commences as we queue approaching the photographers. I watch the other graduates preen and prepare themselves in front of the mirrors so vainly supplied. I don't personally feel the need to even adjust my makeshift plate hat, i'm already well aware how ludicrous i look. The day is not about me however it's about mum and nan feeling proud or some such sentiment i can't understand. I glance at my chubby mug in the mirror. I look like a flesh coloured ball pit trapped in a tornado of curtains. I'm lead into the shooting space.

"OK hold this like this" she hands me a plastic baton with a ribbon on it...is this supposed to be my degree? "Now stand there like that and turn your head over to here, then raise your arm up here, look towards there, raise one leg, spin on the axis of your ankle, shift your spinal column sixty degrees to the left, tickle yourself, squint emphatically and salute the back of your neck...now relax" I'm a deformed mannequin, a pointless puppet devoid of all personality, but i suppose that's what these photos are all about.

She takes several shots since apparently i'm not smiling despite trying to contort my face into that most unsustainable of positions. I end up with two photos, one looking like i'd just applied for the grim reaper's job and another with a maniacal forced smile reaching up for my loftily poised eyebrows. That will have to do i guess, i've got plenty of photos where i look like a serial killer, what's one more?

I finally leave the sports hall and begin the long conspicuous trek towards the corn exchange where the actual ceremony embarks on it's forebodingly dull voyage into inanity. Despite being amongst hundreds of similar walking fabric cocktails i feel self-concious in this get-up and try to hurry as much as possible to the destination. Mother however justifiably wants some photos so i position myself on the grass somewhere between the empty beer cans and the seagulls and struggle to smile into the sun once more.

After only getting lost once we find the place and i'm directed to a separate entrance again.
A staff member glimpses at my ticket and enlightens me with the knowledge i should look for my seat number N8 amongst the lettered rows in front of me. Some awkward shuffling past people ensues until i sit down with a weighty thud and realise said people are my coursemates. The placement is fortunate as i find myself next to the only person with arguably more disdain for these types of things than me. We discuss how cultish we all seem and consider the possibility of indoctrination from the giant screen looming over us.

There's a brass band in the corner playing some bloated ceremonial number. I can't see my relatives amongst the sizeable crowd of guests behind us. I'm pleasantly surprised and caught off guard by a coursemate asking about my latest book. Another asks me what it's about and all i manage to splutter forth is "a guy turns to stone...it's quite surreal" Who wouldn't be sold on a winning pitch like that? Suddenly the screen bursts into life and a promotional video with the soundtrack of a sci-fi epic blares statistics and achievements at us. I question the pointlessness in promoting a university to people who have just left it.

Sitting through the minutes of university history does nothing to aid my already losing battle against slumber. The coursemate next to me points out the patronising leaflets we've been given "graduate your career" You'll have to clean out the cobwebs and mothballs first. The screen eventually ceases its assault and someone explains in detail how to act appropriately during the ceremony.

The brass band starts up again as we're ordered to awkwardly stand and a group of middle-aged to elderly men and women (presumably related to the university) take to the stage and begin a slog of speeches that even my nan said was tedious. I entertain the notion that this is a centuries old ceremony steeped in tradition that i should be honoured or at least respectful to be a part of, but in actuality it's the most pompous display i think i've ever seen and coming from someone who studied theatre in college, that's saying something.

The whole thing feels so divorced from reality, from the real world i've been in for the past few months. The world of struggling to find a job, feeling like a failure and mournfully eating my own body weight in ice cream. They claim that something out of something students from this university go onto high paying jobs of some large amount of money and i can't take a word of it seriously as my neighbour tells me of a week he's just spent with a film company collecting cups and playing public bouncer on their film shoot. The power of having a degree.

After what feels like an eternity the name calling and hand shaking part of the procedure takes place. A lot of graduates garner prominent whooping and cheers from the crowd whereas i decide to just keep clapping consistently throughout rather than for intermittent bursts at each person. The boredom is temporarily lifted as our turn on the stage arrives. There are at least two cameras projecting us onto the overhead screen and i glance up at it as i'm summoned. The vice-chancellor of something thanks me and gives me a sweaty handshake then before i know it i'm back in my seat stapling my eyelids open.

The names are systematically checked off and after some agonisingly dull "special awards" we finally leave the building and i stand underneath some scaffolding wondering what all the fuss was about. It was nice to see my coursemates again, perhaps because it may be the last time i see many of them. Now i just have to walk all the way back to the leisure centre to give the robes back and then perhaps i can at last drink that neglected lucozade. I start to get a headache.