Chris' Graduation from Utah

University of Utah Graduation Ceremony


Despite not actually graduating from Utah until August, my family made a mass pilgrimage to Salt Lake City in May to watch me attend the Spring graduation covocation. So I was stuck attending.... I cheated them out of a ceremony when I graduated from the University of Minnesota by telling them I "wasn't done yet," but I couldn't think of an equally compelling excuse to escape the boredom of this ceremony. So despite having to prepare for my dissertation defense 3 days later, Salt Lake became the site of an impromptu mini-family reunion. They claimed to enjoy the ceremonies. I guess that's what counts. So after the ceremony my bother and parents got to meet my advisor, Chuck, and take pictures of me in strange-looking robes with anyone they could think of: me and my parents, me and my grandparents, me and my aunts and uncles, me and my brother, and me and random people passing by.... Still my relatives had a good time, especially as only my brother and parents had visited Salt Lake City before. So everyone else got a chance to tour the city, enjoy the mountains and dry mountain air, see where I lived and worked for five years, and a chance to see me dress up funny. At left is me with my grandparents, who drove 24 hours over three days out to Salt Lake from Minneapolis (and again on the way back) to attend the convocation. On the right are my aunt and uncle, Steve and Faith. (Who took most of the pictures on this page. Thanks!) Of course, what would a family gathering be without a family meal, or without asking random waiters and waitresses to take photos? Honestly, I don't know, because I've never been to such a family gathering. Since nobody was willing to seriously entertain my idea of sushi, we ended up at California Pizza Kitchen. It's a good restaurant, though it was much better when it was simply a novelty (i.e., eating there one or two times everytime SIGGRAPH was in Los Angeles). Now that the restaurant has spread all over the country, it's not so exciting. I maintain that seeing my relatives' reaction to raw fish would have been much more amusing. After dinner, they all feigned great excitement about the possibility of seeing the results of my research. While I was quite shocked (as you can see on the right) by such obvious lies, I played along, as I really should have been practing my defense talk instead of attending convocations. After taking two or three times as long as planned (due to various interruptions, questions relating to Photoshop, requests to fix various computer catastrophes once I moved back to the midwest, and other discussion that I've long since relegated to the dustbin of history) they professed themselves satisfied and expressed their confidence in my assured success during my actual defense. Obviously, they must all be pretty knowledgable computer scientists, because sure enough I passed. Below, you can see my relatives professing their confidence in my abilities.... except for my brother (center), who appears to have contracted a severe migraine from my talk.

Despite not actually graduating from Utah until August, my family made a mass pilgrimage to Salt Lake City in May to watch me attend the Spring graduation covocation. So I was stuck attending.... I cheated them out of a ceremony when I graduated from the University of Minnesota by telling them I "wasn't done yet," but I couldn't think of an equally compelling excuse to escape the boredom of this ceremony. So despite having to prepare for my dissertation defense 3 days later, Salt Lake became the site of an impromptu mini-family reunion.

They claimed to enjoy the ceremonies. I guess that's what counts.

So after the ceremony my bother and parents got to meet my advisor, Chuck, and take pictures of me in strange-looking robes with anyone they could think of: me and my parents, me and my grandparents, me and my aunts and uncles, me and my brother, and me and random people passing by....

Still my relatives had a good time, especially as only my brother and parents had visited Salt Lake City before. So everyone else got a chance to tour the city, enjoy the mountains and dry mountain air, see where I lived and worked for five years, and a chance to see me dress up funny.
At left is me with my grandparents, who drove 24 hours over three days out to Salt Lake from Minneapolis (and again on the way back) to attend the convocation.

On the right are my aunt and uncle, Steve and Faith. (Who took most of the pictures on this page. Thanks!)
Of course, what would a family gathering be without a family meal, or without asking random waiters and waitresses to take photos? Honestly, I don't know, because I've never been to such a family gathering.

Since nobody was willing to seriously entertain my idea of sushi, we ended up at California Pizza Kitchen. It's a good restaurant, though it was much better when it was simply a novelty (i.e., eating there one or two times everytime SIGGRAPH was in Los Angeles). Now that the restaurant has spread all over the country, it's not so exciting. I maintain that seeing my relatives' reaction to raw fish would have been much more amusing.

After dinner, they all feigned great excitement about the possibility of seeing the results of my research. While I was quite shocked (as you can see on the right) by such obvious lies, I played along, as I really should have been practing my defense talk instead of attending convocations.

After taking two or three times as long as planned (due to various interruptions, questions relating to Photoshop, requests to fix various computer catastrophes once I moved back to the midwest, and other discussion that I've long since relegated to the dustbin of history) they professed themselves satisfied and expressed their confidence in my assured success during my actual defense. Obviously, they must all be pretty knowledgable computer scientists, because sure enough I passed.

Below, you can see my relatives professing their confidence in my abilities.... except for my brother (center), who appears to have contracted a severe migraine from my talk.

Last Modified: Friday, February 18, 2005

Chris Wyman (cwyman@cs.uiowa.edu)