Without question the most universally unflattering get-up in all the earth.
First, let us address the innumerable distresses of the mortar board.
A dreadful chapeau. The long cap over the forehead, the flat square of polyester-covered cardboard on the top... Grievous features!! And how is one supposed to wear one's hair? If one pulls it out to achieve a look of fullness, it looks ridiculous.
If one tucks her hair behind her ears, she has accomplished the optical illusion of a remarkably shrunken cranium, taken down in size by 200%! Perhaps 300%!
This effect is perhaps more accurately known as "guinea-fowl head."
And then there is the tassel, which never fails to repeatedly hit the face.
Does this truly convey an appearance of higher intelligence?
I think not.
But graduation robes for a MASTERS degree candidate come with their own set of special idiosyncrasies. Will the audience please direct their attention to the baffling sleeve apparatuses?
What are these long
bits at the end? Are these pockets for storage? Are they intended as oven mitts? Am I supposed to decorate the ends and use them as hand-puppets? Were the robe designers concerned that their Masters candidates would need polyester mittens in June?
Maybe they're trying to encourage us to try to fly with our advanced knowledge.
Also there is the "hood"-- the focal point of a Masters robe. Unfortunately the hood is such a bizarrely shaped piece of fabric that it is almost impossible to ascertain its proper wear. Good thing they provide instructions.
"Make sure to tie the hood to some part of your outfit underneath your robe so that it doesn't choke you all the time."
One wonders how they conjectured it. What inspired tailor decreed that THIS-- a shapeless robe! A preposterous hat! A swath of colorful and confounding fabric! A dangling TASSEL!-- would be the attire best befitting a graduated scholar? What feverish minds, stumbling out the library after finals, first voluntarily slumped into these hideous trappings and thereby established the robes as "traditional garb"? Who decreed that the best way to honor long hours of study, sleepless nights of paper-writing, exhausting and exhaustive projects, and synapses frayed by ceaseless stress-- was with THIS?
And why does the combination
yet provoke some excitement-- some feeling of very real accomplishment-- from its bemused wearer?
Today is graduation day, friends. It is graduation day, even though I still have to take class all summer, and even though I still have to find a job, and even though the black polyester sleeve flaps don't-- woe-- work as wings.
It is graduation day: a day for celebrating--a day for pomp. A day for circumstance. A day for pompish circumstantial flying. :)
What gorgeous feathers, have I!
