Caltech Commencement 2007

Caltech's commencement was today.

The commencement speech, by Jared Diamond, sucked total ass. He basically just mentioned stuff that I assume is from his book (probably the first chapter) and didn't bother making any connections to Caltech aside from an asisine way of introducing his speech with the idea of what the world is going to be like in 32 years because that's about how much older Jean-Lou Chameau (Caltech's new president, who was official installed today as part of the ceremony even though he's been around since September) is than the typical graduating senior. Also, his repeated assertion that Chameau's age constitutes the prime of his career is wrong for most scientists. While the 'best work is under 30' bit that one hears about, say, mathematics isn't true, I would argue that 10 years before retirement is atypical at best in as a career prime for a scientist. Any, while Diamond gets some credit for not being David Baltimore, his speech sucked and would have been far better if he actually drew some real connections to the Caltech student experience. Even Tom Brokaw did that a little bit! (See, I told you I'd get back to posting rants here.)

The important reason I went to the graduation ceremony was to be there to be there to cheer on Janet Sheung and Julius Su, both of whom are good friends of mine. Janet is a Pagegirl who I know primarily from ping pong (yes, some people from Page are actually very cool) and over the last several months (which is when we really got to know each other well) she's been my main ping pong partner and co-conspirator on t-shirts and stuff. Julius was officially awarded his Ph.D. today. I first met him during Rotation in Fall 2004 (my frosh year), and he's one of the few people I met that week who has been my friend ever since. One of my favorite Julius stories, about the alternative uses of capacitors, is in Legends III. (Julius did an excellent job telling this story!) Also, I've counted Julius for than any other Flem in history. (It's kind of funny that I went to the commencement ceremony and cheered mainly for people from Page and Fleming. Well, those were the two important ones, at any rate.)

The other thing I really like about graduation besides cheering on my friends (and, in some years --- like 1998 and 2005 --- the commencement speeches) is to see the cornucopia of funky caps and gowns worn by the professors. It's really awesome that each of them wears the plumage ("Beautiful plumage!") of their doctoral institution and some of them (especially those from the old European institutions) are extremely funky. I love seeing the professors march every year. I took pictures of my postdoc advisor Mike Cross and my phononic-crystal collaborator Chiara Daraio, though I suspect they didn't come out well. (They're both very tall, so we'll see.) Apparently, they talked about me a little bit while they were marching.

Also, my timing in walking up to get a seat was extremely fortuitous: I ran into Janet coming out of Baxter, so I was able to get a picture of her in cap and gown. I didn't see Julius and it's really hard to get shots of people while marching, but one out of two isn't bad.

Three final observations about the ceremony: (1) While some yellow shirts were present in the audience, this year's commencement didn't include a sea of yellow (a tradition that started during my senior year, instigated by that year's frosh --- I believe Pei was the main one who set that up, but some of my readers may be able to confirm or deny this) and also didn't include the gong. I like the idea of banging the gong for every Lloydie even though I wasn't there to root for Lloydies on this particular occasion. (2) This is the first year that Techers who were one term away from graduating could walk with their class (with an additional notation in the program). This was an excellent policy change and was long overdue. (3) This was my 9th Caltech commencement ceremony. I know there will be at least one or two more in my future.