GRADUATED!

May 15 (Sunday 10 am) was the College of Education convocation at which I got my PhD in Education.

My sister Ann and her husband Cam Johnston flew out to Chicago the day before and were picked up by a Chicago friend who had lived in LA, Alicia Ziemlo. They drove down and met up with Jack and Joan and me, who had driven down from Joe Walvoord's wedding up in Wisconsin the Friday before. Mom and Dad would have been sure to be there, so it was good to have family cheering me on on the "big day".

I'm traveling in my car (Dad's old Infiniti) at the moment, so I had to leave California quite a ways in advance - Monday May 9, in fact. I was visiting up in Santa Barbara just before, so it made the drive even longer. The day before I was to drive through the Plains, I checked the Weather Channel and found that both interstate 70 through Kansas and 80 through Nebraska were in the red zone - "severe" weather: thunderstorms, flood watches and tornadoes. I gambled by picking Nebraska and got right into the middle of the most severe weather. In fact, I had to give up crossing any of Nebraska after getting into Ogallalah from Colorado. I had been fleeing a particularly nasty patch of weather with golf-ball sized hail and blinding rain since Colorado and found out that it would be cutting me off if I traveled any further along interstate 80 (not to mention all the counties ahead with tornado warnings, etc.), so I just gave up for the day and got into a motel for the evening.

That also meant the next day I had to cover over 900 miles to get to Joe's wedding in Wisconsin. I woke up at 5:00 the next morning and was on the road by 6:30. Didn't get to Elkhart Lake until about 9:30 that evening. The weather was fortunately pretty mild all day, but it was about 5 hours longer than I normally prefer to travel in a day.

PhD candidates (usually a small bunch) instead of just getting diplomas are "hooded" and can pick some significant faculty member or other person to be their "hooder" to place their colored hood (not covering the head) over their head and draped behind their black robe. I had chosen two: my dissertation director Bob Hart (since 1998!) and my committee chair Gary Cziko. Only one showed up - Gary. (Bob, I learned later, had to rush up to northern Illinois to take care of a family estate emergency: the building housing the parents' antique business had collapsed, crushing many of the antiques and damaging a nearby building.) In hindsight, I was glad I had selected TWO hooders. At the moment I was to bend down to aid my hooder in placing the hood over me I went into autopilot and knelt down on one knee. As we walked off the podium afterwards, Gary whispered "it's not supposed to be a knighting!"

That evening I had a big graduation party (over 50 guests) out in the country at the home of some old Urbana friends now also in the PhD program in Education, Ray and Heidi Meredith. I hired a local Brazilian band, Desafinado, to play, most of whom I knew from elsewhere, so it was more like inviting friends than nameless band members. They played for two hours in the living room - bossa nova mainly. It was a potluck, but the Sundberg's took responsibility for all the drinks: soft drinks, beer, champaign (thanks to Ann and Cam) and "caipirinha", the national drink of Brazil: freshly squeezed limes, rum, ice and sugar all mixed in a big cooking pot (it was very popular). The guests included friends from the past 11 years in Urbana: fellow teachers from the Intensive English Institute, friends from Parkland (community) College, WEFT radio station, my church (New Covenant Fellowship), and my programs at the U of I. After dark, Ray made a big bonfire in the yard outside, and people stood around warming themselves (it was unseasonably cold and windy -- but not rainy, fortunately). Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, including the kids. Ann, Cam and Alicia mixed very comfortably with everyone and had a good time, too, they said.

The past couple of days I've been hanging around Urbana getting ready for my next -- and final -- deadline, my conference presentation at the CALICO conference at Michigan State University this Friday. (And I've been visiting friends, as well, I need to admit.) I'm taking off in a few hours to drive up to East Lansing but I thought you all deserved a blog update after the big day!