Commencing at last!

Well, at last, Harvard Commencement is over and I am a graduate. It felt pretty darned good.
Not a lot more to say other than we had a wonderful time celebrating and it is such a relief to know that I don't have to do any more school work!

Everyone in my family finally got a ticket to the morning commencement exercises, which is no small feat. Roughly 32,000 people (including grads and guests) gathered in the yard for the morning exercises.
This photo shows people packing in on the library stairs - they are the unfortunate folks who didn't get seats. But they also didn't wait at the closed gates starting at 6 AM so there is a trade off of sorts!

These are the Ed School doctoral students leading the HGSE procession into the yard. Somehow our school got seated incorrectly and I almost wound up sitting with the School of Public Health. The great thing about my seating was that I was only about 20 feet away from my family. So I got to sneak over and have a little visit before the ceremony began.

The photo above features our Dean (in blue) at our HGSE diploma ceremony. Our ceremony occurred in the Radcliffe Yard which is a lovely green lawn behind our main HGSE building.

The diploma ceremony was a lot of fun and afterward I had this moment of deep emotion - and I knew that all I wanted to do was find Ryan and give him a giant hug. I really could *not* have survived the program _and_ full time work without his support. It was a moment of relief that all of that extra hard work was over and I just wanted to squeeze him tight!

We did some family photos after the ceremony which I think turned out quite nicely!

HOORAY!