if you give a graduate student her academic hood, she's going to want to...

There's a series of children's books by Laura Joffe Numeroff that started coming out about the time I was an ickle firstie, and they all start with "If you give..." There's a book about a mouse another about a moose and a pig and a dog and a cat... and I can't find my book right now, but we had been gifted with the first book about a mouse [maybe it was for both of us?] and my brother loved the first book so much that we had to buy  an additional copy of the book to ensure fraternal fairness. And he still put his initials in both copies.  He was four or five, I can forgive him [actually, I see it now and it makes me laugh].

I had been on the fence about going to commencement. I vacillated between wanting to celebrate, waiting to hide, and thinking that the scheduling was pretty inconvenient. I sat through ten commencements in undergrad as part of the choir and 12 person chorale; you get over it after a while.

But unless I'm completely insane, this is the only master's I'm going to pursue [I'll probably add a reading cert, but that's not a new degree]. After the exit interviews, I wasn't even sure if I could get hands on a cap and gown for graduation. Turns out you could still get get your, ahem, "regalia" at the bookstore. [It's smurf blue. I wish I was kidding.]

The first line of exposition on this sheet made me laugh. If you give a graduate student her academic hood, she's going to want to...