June Graduation

This is my brilliant friend Cynthia. She graduated last Friday with the same degree I'm going for (Master of Philosophy, African Studies). Cynthia does a lot of gender work for NGO's in Kenya where she's from. I wouldn't have gotten through the semester without her. She always took time to read through my papers and help me edit and work through my ideas more thoroughly. She will be returning to Nairobi in a week and I will miss her a lot. I suppose this gives me a good reason to visit Kenya!

On another note, the grad ceremony was a lot like American colleges with the robes and whatnot. However, there were no commencement speeches, no pomp and circumstance, and no blow horns. Every graduate got a fair amount of stage time. Their name would be called, they would walk onto stage and kneel (yes, kneel) before the vice-chancellor of UCT. The chancellor would tap their head with a grad cap and then the grad would stand up and have a garment draped over thier shoulders and then walk off stage. I was pretty impressed with how patient the audience was for all of this, there were around 200 grads. Overall, there are several grad ceremonies held throughout june and december to accomodate all of UCT's graduating students.