I think Sophie was more excited about it than either one of us. We've been telling her that we'll be attending Jude's graduation for a week or so now and it clearly has been on her mind ever since. In fact, by Thursday, everyone at her school was congratulating Jude because Sophie had been telling anyone who would listen that Jude was graduating:
Sophie has been talking a lot about Jude's graduation. I asked her what was going to happen at the graduation and she said, "They are going to call Dada, Dr. Jude Yew!" I asked her if she would also have to start calling him Dr. Jude Yew but she assured me that she would still call him "Dada" :)
In the end, I think she was sufficiently excited by the whole experience- even before we made it to the auditorium, she was virtually bursting with anticipation- "It's Dada graduation! I'm so excited!" She probably doesn't have a clue what it means to graduate but we've been talking about it to her enough that she knows it's something worth celebrating. She did really well for most of the ceremony- sat quietly while the faculty proceeded in to the strains of Pomp and Circumstance, waited patiently for everyone to sit and settle in, listened in awe as our friend, Devin, sang a stirring rendition of the national anthem, and was even really good through an opening address AND the Commencement speech (with the exception of that one loud outburst which I'm sure EVERYONE heard because the auditorium was so hushed- "Why did the graduation music stop? Where's Dada? Oh Dada, where are you??" Jude said he definitely heard her all the way up front...)
We think Sophie definitely had a memorable day- she was still talking about it this morning, mostly about Jude's academic dress and what she saw/heard/did in the auditorium yesterday. And this is one of the main reasons why Jude decided to attend the ceremony in the first place. He had actually defended his dissertation in August last year and started his new job the month after, so it's not as if yesterday's proceedings meant a whole lot to him personally. But we wanted Sophie to experience the pomp and ceremony of it all- how many times in your life are you going to witness one of your parents properly receive his Ph.D.? She was only 16 months old when I got mine and probably doesn't remember anything, so we thought it would nice for her to be part of Jude's special day, even if it is just symbolic.
Just so you have a sense of what a difference almost a year and a half makes, here's us three at our two graduation ceremonies:
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| My graduation, Dec 2010 |
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| Jude's graduation, April 2012 |
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