Graduation Day!

Posts that have been a long time coming.  Life has been crazy.  Trying to adapt to my schedule of working 6 days a week, combined with my internship makes for long days.  Its hard to even get outside and enjoy this fabulous weather.  My office gets up to 35 degrees inside because we don’t have air con and the office faces the sun the whole day.  There are huge windows that act more or less like a magnify glass.  It crazy – don’t know how I manage to get anything done.

I’ve had a crazy past month with a couple of trips.  First I was off to Victoria for my convocation ceremony (wheee!! yay).  It was weird seeing everyone again.  The last time we were all together was at least 6 months ago.  A lot of the people I spoke to actually have found jobs.  Everyone was all across the board - some went back to their old employers (especially those interested in accounting), some are working something temporary until they find a job and others have found jobs they really like.  It seems like there was a pretty good success rate.  You read so much about how its difficult for graduates today to find a job, but it appears that those from my class did just fine.  I don’t think a single person I spoke to said they were unemployed. 

 I’m in this photo – can you spot me?

I didn’t know what to expect at my convocation.  I didn’t talk to anyone prior to going, I didn’t know who was going to show up.  I wasn’t really looking forward to it.  It was more a lets get it over with.  I was expecting 20 or 30 people to graduate (the majority of my program graduates in the fall), but I was surprised to find a class of 50 or so.  It definitely did not feel like that when I was taking my last semester. 

The ceremony went well.  I didn’t fall over when crossing the stage (success!).  I took my obligatory photos with the parents and then it was over.  I didn’t really listen too much to the people that were speaking, I was concentrated on taking everything in the room in and trying to find my parents without much success.  Its all on film anyways so if I really have a pressing urge to relive the experience I could (not really…).

 

My parents and I went over to Victoria the day before my graduation ceremony.  I showed them around places that they hadn’t been to before.  We even went to afternoon tea!  Not at the Empress (expensive), but at this tiny shop called the White Heather Tea Room.  I would highly recommend it if you ever go over to Victoria and want to have afternoon tea.  We ordered the menu with the largest variety of food and we were eating the leftovers for days.  There were three tiers: savory, sandwiches and desserts. We barely made it through the sandwiches and didn’t even touch the desserts - we took those to go and ate them the next couple of days.  There were some pretty tasty things though.  Makes me hungry just thinking about it now.

   
(L-R) Warm savory items; sandwiches; desserts

I took them up Mt. Doug and to see the Government House, which I had never been to either.  I had told them about the ice cream at the Beacon Hill Drive in last year, but they didn’t get a chance to try it.  We went there and then drove along Dallas Rd.  It was a gorgeous day to do it – the sun was shining and it was warm. 

 Government House

After my ceremony, we went to Ferris’ Oyster Bar and Grill (I had their grilled ahi tuna sandwich – soo goood) and passed time downtown before heading to the ferry terminal downtown.  We were headed to Port Angeles via the Coho!

For more pictures, click here.