Sunday, May 15, 2022
Sunday Reflection: Graduation
There's a lot going on! Yesterday was graduation, on Tuesday I will be sworn into the MN Bar (I've kept my Michigan bar membership all these years, but it was time to make it official with MN) and on Thursday I will be in Washington to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee.
Graduation is emotional and wonderful and always different. Yesterday, as the professor of the year, I had the honor of putting the academic hoods on the graduates. It's not as easy as you might imagine! My first few tries looked like an attempt at assassination by strangulation, then I improved to merely awkward and after a while I got to be ok at it. Sorry, graduates whose names begin with the letters "A," "B," and "C"!
Afterwards, I got to meet the families of these people I have gotten to know over the past three years-- and I really love that part. A lot. It can explain so much! It's fascinating to hear the perspective of the parents, how they lived through the experience with their kids. Even more interesting are the spouses. Often they look kind of tired and thrilled all at once, which totally makes sense.
The bond between students and teachers, at its best, is a kind of agape love. Like all kinds of love, it requires patience and forgiveness and levity. Too often we lose sight of that.
