Caltech's 2006 commencement

I decided to set my alarm and go to commencement after all. Here are some things to point out:

1. Baltimore is no Sandra Tsing Loh. Unsurprisingly, he spent a good bit of his speech harping his own accomplishments. (I'm not going to include a link to it. At some point, I started just tuning out what he was saying; the part that wasn't about him was extremely generic and uninteresting.) He took 9 years to "graduate," but he was bested by...

2. Alex Sheive (originally from the class of 2000), who finally graduated this year. (He wasn't at commencement, however.) I remember when Alex first got into Lloyd. Within 2 weeks, almost everybody was saying he'd never graduate. It turns out that he was just on the ten-year plan. I wonder if he's the last undergrad who overlapped with me as an undergrad who will get a Bachelors degree from Tech? I suppose it would be fitting. On the first day that I showed up on campus (6/03/05) after returning to Tech, I ran into Alex Sheive. That's how I knew I was really back. (I ran into Kacie Shelton '00 that day as well. I hadn't realized she was still around. I talk to her a bit at today's ceremony and she games with us on occasion.)

3. I love how the current Lloydies bang the gong for all Lloydie graduates. (This started after I left.) As I was mentioning to Tim, the first time the non-seniors wore their yellow shirts was when I was a senior. I believe Pei is the one who came up with that idea. I remember Kristie Armentrout remarking that she almost had years in her eyes when she saw that. (As cool as it is as a tradition---and it is a very fine tradition!---it really means so much more when people aren't expecting it!) I accidently knew it was going to happen. While Tim was helping me with the infamous triple-Tarzan Boy chaser sequence (it's been a few years, but in the past, I've heard references to this from Lloydies who didn't overlap with me) on my last day as an undergrad, I accidently saw that e-mail about the shirts. While I wasn't hanging out with the bulk group of Lloydies (though I do know a few of them), I did wear a yellow Lloyd shirt. To increase style points, I wore my really faded shirt (which is actually faded because it was bleached once when it was washed; it didn't become the way it is gradually) rather than the bright one that I have. It was absolutely essential that I wear the faded one rather than the bright one. It increases the effect. :)

4. I saw some visiting alum friends with whom I did not technically overlap: Deb Eason '02, who I knew was coming because her sister was graduating, and Nick Tanushev '02, who I didn't know was coming but I had figured was one of the very likely people to come. (Nick's sister is a Darb from my class. I used to work on math 109 with her.) One of the things about Caltech undergraduacy that I have always found very special is how people visit and one can become friends with people who weren't technically there at the same time. Many alums visit for graduation every year, providing one of the best reflections of why undergraduate life here is so special. (It's one of several reflections, but [as an example] nobody does this at my high school, and I can't imagine there is much of this at larger schools, so I think this is among the better reflections.)

5. In terms of (much) older alums, I also had a chance to talk a bit with Dave Zobel '84, with whom I have communicated by e-mail several times over the last few years (because of the Legends project) and who I finally met in real life in May at a local lunch for alums. He's a funny person. (If the name is familiar, he's the one who won the Lyton contest for coming up with a truly awful opening line for a book.) He introduced me to the editor of Caltech News (who I only previously knew by e-mail), so now I think I know almost every major Caltech PR person, and I definitely know the editors of all their publications. (In other words, in addition to talking to old friends, I even did some networking today.)


There's some other cool stuff I found out today, though it's not related to commencement, so I'll leave that for another time.