The Doctor Is In

A little after 8:30 on Sunday morning, Dad, Mom, Mari and I headed down to a rainy UIC campus, where they dropped me and my scarlet mortarboard off at the parking garage with more than 1300 other College of Liberal Arts and Sciences graduates. A little after ten o’clock, the ten other English Ph.D. candidates and our faculty sponsors led the gowned horde into the UIC Pavilion. I thought I would be accompanied by my dissertation director, Gerald Graff, but he was an esteemed stage sitter and only managed to give me a congratulatory shot from his “I see you” finger pistol.

The ceremony was broadcast on the web and you can see it now on the UIC website if you click here (scroll down to "Sunday, May 11th," and click on "Liberal Arts and Sciences"; you have to download RealPlayer if you don’t have it already.) The ceremony was two hours and twenty-five minutes long, but if you are so inclined, you can skip to these few highlights:

18:48: I walk in and take a seat on the first row. The blond woman in the black gown--the first prof to walk in-- is Patty Harkin; the tall dude in a black gown--fifth to walk in--is David Schaafsma. Both were on my dissertation committee. I am the 4th red gown in the room, two behind Dave. The gentleman at the podium is Dad's doppleganger.

19:25 I tell Dave something droll about the printed program. He will later “hood” me on behalf of Jerry. (Dave wore blue jeans under his gown and brought papers to grade during the ceremony.)

20:17 I chat up fellow graduate Glenda Jones, whom I've just met. We are two of eleven UIC grad students to receive a Ph.D. in English today (six others have graduated over the past year).

1:08:06 -1:09:03 I am conferred with the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and am admitted to all the rights, privileges and responsibilities of that degree (I have no idea what any of these are).

1:12:15 I am invited on to the stage to accept congratulations from assorted deans and am given a diploma cover (see photo at right). The diploma itself will be mailed to me in a few weeks. By 1:13:18, my time on the stage is gone and I have officially completed my descent of Mount Everest (also known as “How I Spent My Thirties”).

When we got back to the house (where Lisa and Melissa had been entertaining the babes), the family documentarians took the front porch shots you see here (Lisa worked the camera detail, Dad the video below). I then picked up Jack, Julie, Nathaniel, and a Sweet Occasions-produced "Congratulations, Dr. Benton" cake, which we devoured after we’d made our way through the Pizza Capri mainfare.

I had a hard time deciding whether I wanted to participate in the ceremony, but it was a lot easier to go through knowing that I have landed a tenure-track job.