Graduation

Gil graduated on April 25. His graduation marked the end of an era, and we'll miss law school, but we're so so SO glad to finally be finished.


The ceremonies began with a humongous commencement ceremony in the Marriott Center. Gil, as a juris doctoral candidate got to sit on the floor. You can actually see him in the picture if you look really hard. He is sitting on the left-hand side of the photo, in the third row. He has a white sashy thing hanging around his neck.


The law school graduation ceremony includes a hooding ceremony, where two professors place the doctoral hood over the graduate's shoulders. This part was tricky for Gil since he was wearing three leis already, but Professors Gerdy and Neeleman managed it without too much trouble. Some student carry their children across the stage to receive their diploma, and we considered doing this with Charlie, but in the end we decided not to inflict three hours of graduation rites on our one-year-old. Besides, he already accompanied Marin across the graduation stage in utero in 2006.


Gil sat on the stand because he was the student-elected graduation speaker. We had carefully timed his speech to make sure he wouldn't go over six minutes, but the applause and laughter made his talk a little longer. Everyone loved his speech, where he cited the total number of pages he'd read in law school, the number of hours of lectures he attended, the number of pages of notes he had typed, etc. The following story also generated applause:

"When I was a law student spouse, I watched my loving, generous, energetic wife turn into a raving lunatic at times. I remember being dumbfounded when my wife asked me to make a 6:00 a.m. run to Kinko’s Copy Center because it was monumentally important that her advocacy brief be covered with a special light blue cardstock. Then I had to do it all over again when she realized that she had missed a comma on the first page. She was much more understanding when she did the same thing for me during my first year. And she constantly reminds me that when she went to Kinko’s Copy Center, she was 7 months pregnant."

The keynote speaker at the graduation was Associate Justice Durrant of the Utah Supreme Court.


It's a shame that, when Gil sat with his law school classmates for the very last time, it had to be in uncomfortable wooden pews and sweltering heat of the Provo Tabernacle.


Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who saw our little family through this important, amazing, frustrating, fascinating time in the life of our family.