Thursday, June 22, 2006

Graduation Stuff

It's been an interesting few days as once again Dundee seems to have changed dramatically in the 2 months I've been away. The old Esso garage has been demolished to make way for a Tesco Extra, the ruined warehouses on Monifieth's shore have burned down and the university seems to be one big building site at the moment.

My trip up was relatively uneventful though I had the worst hayfever ever. My face seemed to swell up making me almost unrecognisable to the dogs when I got in. I even had to pull over and take two tablets outside of Scotch Corner.

I spent most of Tuesday trying to recover from the long drive, went into town and visited the sauna to try and clear out my hayfever before graduation. I also fell foul of the Highlander Games and Groucho taxes and happily parted with tons of cash.

Also, kilt hiring is traumatic for me. Kilt hiring with my mother is slit-your-wrists-in-the-changing-room traumatic. Thankfully this time I endured the former, last time it was the latter. And why is Scottish National Dress so damn complicated to put on?

Graduated today, so the saga of the PhD has finally drawn to a close with, as one of the AC department's other graduands said was "a lonely long drawn out ceremony to match the lonely drawn out process of doing a PhD."

My folks didn't get an official photograph taken and instead decided they'd like one at 11pm after I have long since returned my gown and am about to return my kilt on the morrow. We also didn't go to the garden party as mum and Andrew weren't feeling too well and there was no parking to be had around the university. Bit of an anti-climax then really, as none of my supervisors were in attendance. Did get to see some folk though.

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