A tipster snapped this pic of A-Gut surrounded by her adoring legion of followers before Commencement. We salute you, Amy, for daring to sit on Penn’s oldest/most expensive urinal. Hopefully that fancy robe will get washed before the prez breaks it out again next year.
After a painful four-minute long introduction (skip it and read the Wikipedia article instead), Jon M. Huntsman took the stage to deliver this year’s Commencement speech to the Class of 2010. Huntsman flew all the way from the motherland (China) for this, and it’s pretty obvious that he was excited to share his wisdom with the new crop of alums. Calling himself “the loser of a loser of an educator” (precious!), he reminded the recent grads that if all else fails, they can always resort to the world’s oldest profession–you know, politics.
Huntsman’s speech was full of all of the old clichés (discovering your passions, following your dreams, etc.), but it’s still worth watching if you need a good pep-talk. Oh, and lovin’ the uncomfortable clapping at 5:03.
Some of our graduating pals sent over photo evidence of the highlights of tonight’s College of Arts and Sciences graduation. Enjoy.
The correct spelling would be “lose.” Thanks for helping us and our parents feel like the $200k was really worth it, Penn.
Absurdity ensues, after the jump.
Believe it not, Jon Huntsman’s hotly anticipated Commencement speech is almost here. Tomorrow morning, someone exciting Huntsman himself will take the stage to offer his words of wisdom to the Class of 2010, and if you can’t make it to Franklin Field tomorrow morning and/or are Twitter averse, the entire ceremony is going to be broadcast online.
The webcast is set up to start right alongside the ceremony itself at 9 a.m., but if being there in real time isn’t your major priority, the whole thing will be archived later in the day. We’ll be posting the highlights after viewing it on our own time.
In one of the many absurd emails I’ve received as a graduating senior, this latest e-offense tops all others. It seems that the administration has mistaken the class of 2010 for the class of 2012.
The title was a little alarming, warning Seniors to “Pick Up College Graduation Dangerous Weather Tickets.” While this could also sound like a really cool concert, perhaps an additional graduation perk, it’s really just a little premature graduation preparation:
Your guests will need these tickets only if severe weather and dangerous conditions (continuous downpour and lightning) necessitate moving the ceremony to the Palestra, where space is limited.
As if navigating parents and siblings and g-parents around campus wasn’t hard enough, now Penn is asking us to choose our two favorite. The horrors!
Check out the slew of info hotlines where you can find out whether you’ll receive your diploma indoors or a la carte after the jump.
Our inboxes were flooding this morning with news of this most hilarious listserv gaffe. It’s been a while since we’ve seen one this memorable.
It all started when a College of Arts and Crafts Sciences administrator sent out an email notifying College seniors that their “Commencement Announcements” were available for pick up. An unknowing senior responded, unaware that collegegrads@sas was in fact a listserv. Predictably, absurdity ensued. The best of it after the jump.
In less-dramatic grad speaker news, SAS has announced that this George Smith dude will speak at the College graduation this year. Apparently his time in DRL (yep, he’s an alum) paid off because he invented the “charge-coupled device.” This somehow turned into a digital camera or something. The point is, without him you couldn’t be tagged in pictures on Facebook. Also, he has a Nobel Prize. Badass.
Contrasting the totally left-brain Smith, the student speaker will be Penn celeb Josh Bennett, known most for his slammin’ poetry and for being a Penn celeb. Will his graduation speech be a limerick? A Shakespearean sonnett? We dunno, but we imagine it will flow better than a certain Ambassador to China.
For full deets, check the DP article here.
Over the weekend, I got a slightly disturbing text from my mom, asking “did u get your cap n gown.” While I thought a nonchalant “no” was enough, my phone blew up almost immediately.
Thanks to my semi-unconscious state, the only words I remember were a jumble, something along the lines of “deadline!…. bookstore…last week…your grandmother…” and maybe even something about ”walking down the aisle naked.” It was all a blur; I don’t really want to talk about it.
But if you found yourself in a similar conundrum to my own, never fear. After a quick call to Don at the bookstore, I quickly learned the following:
Maybe next time the bookstore should publicize the whole limited time only offer a little better for those Seniors with better things to worry about.
This would be the perfect submission, but we're not sure if Ben is a B.A. Candidate.
Today, 2010 College graduates received an e-mail from the Dean’s Advisory Board, requesting photo submissions for a CAS Graduation slide show. All of the graduates are sure to get teary-eyed looking at pictures of their 1500 best friends in the world having four years of zany times. The DAB asks that the photos are “tasteful” and “[limited] to those of just College students since it will be shown only to parents of students graduating from the College of Arts and Sciences.”
The guidelines make a lot of sense. First of all, after four long years spent snapping candids of our friends taking midterms, studying in Van Pelt, and listening to educational lectures with open ears and minds, we’re all swimming in “tasteful” photos.
Secondly, our families are definitely not trying to look at pictures of kids they don’t know. We can just hear Grammy shouting, “Who in tarnation is that kid? I’ve never seen him before in my life!” Then Uncle Pete will have to calm her down by explaining that the student was probably in Wharton or Engineering or even Nursing. It won’t make her feel better. Not at all.
So get your tasteful, liberal arts student-filled photos together and send them to Graduation2010@penndab.org. Not just because you could win a $25 gift certificate to a local restaurant, but because it takes a lot of time to play Vitamin C’s “Friends Forever,” Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life),” Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings” and R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly.”
As per a DP online update, Jon M. Huntsman Jr. is booked as the 2010 Commencement speaker. Aside from being the namesake for Wharton HQ, Huntsman used to be the Governor of Utah and now serves as the U.S. Ambassador to China.
It’s no big deal, but we actually predicted this in July. True story. And no, you cannot borrow our crystal ball.
Yes, seniors, that day has come. What day? The day your Bursar privileges have been taken away. PSYCH! You still have a couple months left to buy a computer/birth control/the entire 90210 DVD series for “free.” What you do need to do, however, is to fill out your graduation application.
Yeah, we thought fulfilling 5,691 requirements would qualify us for graduation, too. Not so. As per an excessively long email from the assistant dean for advising, seniors who are expecting to graduate in May need to fill out a grad application by February 15th.
Serving as the first real reminder to seniors that they will soon become irrelevant, save the date mailers for graduation were delivered this holiday weekend. You can find a rundown of the 254th commencement exercises below. And please do leave your guesses for commencement speaker in the comments.
Sunday, May 16
Wharton Undergraduate Division Ceremony
9:00-11:00 a.m.
Franklin Field
Baccalaureate Ceremony
1:30 p.m. (last names A-K) and 3:00 p.m. (last names L-Z)
Irvine Auditorium
College of Arts and Sciences Ceremony
6:30-8:30 p.m.
Franklin Field
Monday, May 17
Commencement Ceremony
Gates open at 8:30 a.m.; procession begins at 9:30, ceremony begins at 10:15
Franklin Field
School of Engineering and Applied Science Ceremony
2:30-4:30 p.m.
Franklin Field
School of Nursing Ceremony
3:00-5:00 p.m.
Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center
Come next May, Franklin Field will be filled with approximately 35,000 discarded plastic bottles. No, it’s not becoming a temporary landfill. Instead, outgoing seniors will be the first class to graduate in 100% eco-friendly garb.
Each cap & gown will be made of 23 or so recycled plastic bottles that would otherwise be sitting in a landfill.
Is it a response to our not-so-green rankings? Or maybe Harvard’s recent fashion line? Who knows, as long as it doesn’t resemble something straight off the Derelict runway, we’re okay with the change.
The company making them, Oak Hall Cap & Gown, claims the gowns are “virtually indistinguishable in color, feel or fit from traditional polyester material.” No word yet on what they will cost but the company will donate to the University’s Green Fund for every gown purchased. Commencement with a conscience?
A few months ago, some bitter chick at UCLA started a Facebook group to prevent underachieving Z-lister James Franco from being the school’s commencement speaker. We don’t want to seem ungrateful; we had a great time hearing John Legend the night after we got drunk with him at Blarney, and we were entertained enough by Amy’s pomp and circumstance remarks to blog about her. However, neither our favorite Ordinary Person nor our esteemed prez quoted R.L. Stine or flew around with a jet pack, and that’s exactly what we would have enjoyed had we been treated to Franco’s words. Lucky for us, he posted highlights from his rejected speech on FunnyorDie.com! (And, lucky for you, we’ve posted the video below.)
For the past nine months, we at UTB have been lucky to have our columnist Carlin grace this blog with her wit and wisdom. She graduated with the rest of the class of ‘09, but we convinced her to bid adieu with one last post. From now on, you can visit Carlin at her new personal blog.
When I was in elementary school, we were asked each semester in my nine years of attendance to fill out a five page self evaluation. I was asked, beginning at the age of five, what was my favorite class? What was the best thing I’d learned? What kind of a friend was I? What kind of a student? What were my strengths? My weaknesses?
I would fill these out pretty meticulously, with the knowledge that not only would my teachers be seeing them, but eventually my parents would too, so what I was really evaluating was the person I wanted them to see me as. Not that I was lying, exactly. But I wanted to be seen as a leader, as creative. A wonderful friend, and wonderfully liked. Smart. Good at everything I put my mind to. When transcripts were added into the equation, I wanted to be seen as engaged; involved in every club, every advanced class, and eventually, rewarded with the perfect boyfriend and wardrobe (I got him, and dumped him two months later for being too boring. The legacy of my wardrobe, however, continues).
Though I haven’t been asked to fill out one of these evaluations in about eight years, I’ve recently found myself thinking about the way we present ourselves, in contrast to the way we actually view ourselves when we strip away the Greek affiliations, social cliques, Facebook, and general Penn-isms. I carried these aspirations of self-preservation with me through college, and added in the edgy flavor of sexual deviant and potty mouth with a rockin’ closet.
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