Graduates....

March and April were months when I saw proud parents (and relatives) see a son or daughter pass into another stage of their life. Tintinnabulations do not go only to a newly wed couple, but to the batch 2008 graduates. It was good to see two nieces graduate with honors and cum laude respectively.

In one of the graduation ceremonies we attended, I cannot keep quiet about my animadversion toward the set up. The graduates, wearing their gowns and make up, and the parents were standing under the sun for an hour or more before the gate was opened an hour after the ceremony had been scheduled to start. The organizers did not think of the people who would attend the occasion or the graduates. Each graduate paid 1550 pesos as a graduation fee. Where did that money go? The school has an unfinished covered gymnasium where they could have held the program. I think it would have been far better than the uncovered “quadrangle” with little bleachers around it where they held the ceremony.

During the graduation, while the graduates were still receiving their diplomas, a heavy rain poured down. Needless to say, they got wet because they did not know where to go at first. The one reading their names kept going on and on as if nothing were wrong. It must have been the worse graduation I ever attended or maybe it was not a graduation. No cheers for the organizers.