If you are volunteering, show up at the Pavilion at 11am. If you are walking show up at 2:30. Take lots of pictures and feel free to comment on your experience at graduation….for you smart phone user, perhaps during the graduation!
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The Harold Lounge 
Some short thoughts after a very long day:
1. As always, it was great to see our students walk the stage. I was reunited with a few students that I hadn’t seen in years, and am thankful for the chance to learn of their plans and say a good-bye.
2. It looked like far fewer students and family left before the ceremony was compete. Then again, I was seated in the front row of the main floor, and it was harder to get a sense of how filled the auditorium was from that position.
3. This morning, I was somewhat annoyed that volunteers needed to report in at 11am. But I figured, “Surely, they wouldn’t make us come in so early unless they needed us there.” Oh, how wrong I was. After about 50 minutes of information that was useless to me, my group of helpers were given about 10 minutes worth of instruction. That was completed at around 12:10pm. We then had three and a half hours of thumb twiddling before marching onto the floor. Though I was happy to spend half my day on graduation, and don’t really mind sacrificing time if it is sacrificed for some purpose, I believe I could have spent the first half of the day on grading or other teaching-related work without sacrificing the quality of the ceremony, if only someone had planned that morning better, and valued the time of faculty more. And no, the quality of the lunch most certainly did not make up for the inconvenience.
4. As with all other potential wastes of time, this too at least had the very positive affect of bringing faculty together. It was good to talk to some great HWC faculty that I almost never otherwise see.
5. The opening remarks seemed shorter than in the past, for which I am most thankful.
6. I was totally spoiled with a front row seat and the company of VP Martyn for the duration of the ceremony. It was definitely a pleasure to have a different perspective on the ceremony.