Sunday, October 7, 2012

Getting Your Degree

If you come from an American school you are probably used to the idea that graduation occurs once per year on some random weekend day in May or June, during which the college town overflows with family and friends.

But this is not how it works at Oxford.  There are something like a dozen degree ceremonies per year.  Once you have been given permission to graduate (or if you are a DPhil, it is called "leave to supplicate", which strictly speaking means, "permission to beg" for your degree), you then have the right to sign up for a ceremony.   This can be shortly after you finish, or could be many years later.   It is not at all unusual for people to return to Oxford to finally collect a degree they earned twenty or more years ago.


In September, a whole bunch of my recently finishing undergraduate students decided to collect their degrees together.   This most excellent bunch, having (most of them) started four years ago this week and finished this past June, is the first set of students who I have seen through from their first year to their last. So I admit that I am particularly attached to them.    I came to the ceremony just to wish them well, and of course, to take their pictures!

.. and here they are!





Apologies for the fact that some of the pictures are not great.   Extra points if you can spot the portrait of Mary Somerville, the namesake of our college.


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