Bachelor (degree) party

After four (or in my case, six) years of hard work (or in my case, a Communications degree), here you are, ready to accept your university degree, among friends, family, and old guys dressed as wizards. Congratulations, young person! The world is your oyster. When I say oyster, I of course mean that in the sense that oysters are becoming extinct and increasingly difficult to come by, and that reaping the rewards of your education will be as difficult as remembering when it’s food-safe to collect oysters from the beach (months that end in Y?).

Though you completed your studies six months ago, today is the day you’ve been waiting for, or at least the day that your mom keeps telling you you were waiting for. After all, it’s not every day you can take pictures on the campus you’re at every day! Well, not pictures featuring you holding a document printed on fine, certificate-style stationary and wearing a dumb hat, anyways. So treasure this moment. Hold your head high as you stand in line like an overly-educated sheep for a smock that drags on the floor because you incorrectly guestimated your size: you’re a unique flower, just like the other 700 graduates with whom you will be forced to march around a building designed by Canada’s most stair-happy architect.

Don’t worry that you start freaking out about not being able to check your purse. Losing all sense of personal control is just part of the fun of being part of an elaborate ceremony! Other delights include: a bagpipe medley and a mortarboard tassle that you keep accidentally inhaling.

There is a certain art to writing a speech that could be applied to any event, and the organizers of your commencement ceremony have nailed it. “Y2K. 9/11. The internet. These are things that have happened. More things will happen in the future. Now that you’ve gotten your degrees, we hope you’ll agree that this is how time works.” Two or three people in hats stupider than yours – thus demonstrating their superior intellect – will throw this sort of abstract sentiment in your general direction. “You’ve achieved . . . stuff. That is something, all right.” Then come the honourary degree recipients! These are given out at every convocation ceremony at your school: 11 per year. Whether you are a math major or not, after 45 years, worthy honourees become harder to come by, and so today's newest doctor is a local singer who has, to be fair, done a lot of charity work, but who is mostly famous for writing songs about angels and remembering that are very popular funeral choices. After twenty minutes of being treated to the musical stylings of this woman who never went to your school and who certainly didn’t pay $20,000 for the privilege, the graduates are hustled across the stage at breakneck speed in order to make time for the next honourary doctorate, who will presumably be some sort of juggler or dog trainer.

“Abigail Chen. Andrew Chen. Dorothy Chen.” And a host of others! Your name is called, you run on stage, shake hands with the university’s prez. Your friends, so kind to sit through both pomp and circumstance, will hoot at you. He’ll crack wise about how you “brought your own fan club!” That’s why they pay him the big bucks. Someone will give you an alumni pin. Your boyfriend, another sweet supporter, will later find one on the ground and make some funny jokes about saving thousands on tuition; this is even more endearing than the bouquet he brought you. 

Afterwards, your grandparents make you pose in front of things and with things and next to things. Your family tells you how proud they are, although you are not necessarily proud of yourself. Though not everyone can get through, say, med school (mostly due to the ickiness of cadavers, I presume), pretty much anyone can get an arts degree. All you have to do is show up, and sometimes you don’t even have to do that, as a little class called Communications and the Canadian Creative Economy has taught us. You can pass classes without buying the textbook (theory tested, hypothesis approved). You can avoid the library for six years. It is not a testament to intelligence or stamina to get a BA, but an indication of not having anything lucrative to do. Who drops out of school because their publishing class is too hard? Nobody. They quit because baby boomers started writing them cheques for social media consulting or they found some steady work dealing drugs. People don’t get into university for the money (or I hope they don’t, or they’re going to be severely disappointed) but they’ll get out of it in the good name of dollah billz. 

Spending years of your life at this school was certainly not a pain, but those last three hours are. At least you got a diploma out of it though. One look at that bad boy and the employment opportunities are going to come pouring in! Every year, thousands of job recruiters die trying to race to the top of Burnaby Mountain to snag fresh grads. Perhaps one day, in addition to alumni pins, they’ll give you memorial ribbons to commemorate this tragedy.

Congratulations, graduate. No other day, ever again, will be more special than this. Please return your robe as soon as possible for the next ceremony.

Parade CV

I may have accidentally agreed to walk through Burnaby for three hours this Saturday in chicken wings and what has only been described to me as a "fun hat". This will somehow not be my most demeaning parade experience.

As I like to work into every conversation I have, I used to work on a honey farm. This may conjure images of smiling, hearty staff clad overalls and pigtails, brows a-glow from an honest day’s work, hawking golden jars from a charming roadside stand, plain but sturdy. In reality, the fluorescent-lit retail front for the commercial pollination operation was manned by a bunch of feeble twenty-somethings and owned by an enthusiastic former police officer who subsisted solely on bee pollen and four hours of daily sleep. Like any independent businessman, he spent a lot of time scheming. “We need to install a tarantula habitat for the kids to look at when they visit! And we’ll build a tea house right next to it!” he would explain to us while emailing blueberry farmers on his Blackberry and driving the forklift to unload an order of jars. “Also, please buy 6 litres of chilli for our festival concession stand; we’ll put some honey in it and say it’s a special recipe and it’ll sell out like crazy. People love eating chilli in July!”

Along these lines of promotional reasoning, we wound up booking a spot in Cloverdale’s annual Santa Claus Parade, the theme of which appeared to be Big Rigs Covered in Lights. Our white company PT Cruiser didn’t really inspire awe in comparison. Cloverdale is the kind of town where Big Rigs matter, too: they are a weird patch of Middle America in the centre of Western Canadian suburban sprawl. The resident teenagers chew tobacco. The neighbourhood is mostly known for its flea market, annual rodeo, and cameos on WB superhero teen dramas. Now you’re all caught up.

While we may not have had the star power of those stupid show-off truckers, what we did have was a second-hand queen bee costume made of Styrofoam and fleece (blue, inexplicably), and boxes and boxes of honeysticks. I was nominated to inhabit the suit, while two of my co-workers donned beekeepers’ garb and another drove the logo car alongside. We would hand out honeysticks and not run over any children. It seemed simple enough. Unfortunately, though, as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity states, parades move faster than they appear to from the sidelines. And as you also probably recall, his theory of Winter Coats Worn Underneath a Styrofoam Body Suit proposes that you will be very, very sweaty very quickly as you sprint through the streets trying to keep up with the rest of the pack. Empirically, I can say that both hypotheses check out.

Pre-parade, armed with smiles and gluctose.

My vision limited to the queen’s gaping, lipsticked maw, I probably stabbed a few children in the face as I briskly jogging through the black December night, attempting to dispense treats and not get run over by a glowing-green 18 wheeler. My beekeeper comrades seemed to fare better. Dressed in breathable cotton jumpers and mesh hoods, they spread joy, not terror to the public. I am disoriented in my now-sauna-like mascot prison, unsure of where the parade was going. I have been running steadily after what I am hoping are the taillights of our Cruiser and I’m sweating profusely. The sweat is plastering my hair to my head and my bare palms (which admittedly, do not do much for the overall realism of the costume, but comically oversized gloves were not provided) are making the honeysticks slippery and gross. I thrust them into the general direction of toddler-shaped people; I keep forgetting that mascots don’t talk, which is particularly unfortunate due to my exercise-induced heavy breathing and gasping. “Come visit soon!” I wheeze creepily, the suit’s dummy arms (the attention paid to anatomical detail by the costume-maker was impressive, particularly considering their laissez-faire attitude towards the general consensus that bees are “yellow” and “black”) accidentally brushing a snowpant-clad leg, causing parents concern that perhaps this so-called “honey farm” was a threat to the family values time-honoured by the Road Truckerz Association.

Co-worker, also terror-running.

Eventually, every parade must come to an end, and no one was gladder than I. We peeled off our costumes – some more odourous than others – and piled back into the car, sucking on any leftover honeysticks that weren’t embedded in some poor Cloverdalian’s eye. The line to leave the parade essentially retraced the route it had taken, but with fewer lawn chair spectators. It turned out to be six blocks.

In sum, I am very cautious about the amount of "fun" this so-called "fun hat" will be providing this weekend. Stay tuned . . .