Yesterday was the 2012 postgraduate graduation ceremony where physics graduands got their masters and PhDs. A student of mine got her PhD, so I was there, and very proud. She is from Malaysia so her parents could not be there, but her husband was and lots of pictures were taken so her parents could see what their daughter had achieved.

As an academic, it is great to see our students do so well and get the recognition they deserve. Graduation ceremonies are quite formal rituals really. The students who will get the degrees and their parents are seated first in Guildford cathedral (where the ceremony is). Then we academics file in, in two lines in a procession, and then finally the bigwigs such as Vice-Chancellor, etc come in, and the ceremony begins.

Before we are led into the main part of the cathedral, we academics gather in the side chapel. We congratulate each other on how well our students have done, which is nice.

There is also some light-hearted joking. It is one of the few places you will hear one grown man complement another on how good they look in magenta. Indeed I guess it is one of the few places you will see man dressed in magenta as it is not a shade generally favoured by men.

Most academics have PhDs, and UK PhD gowns vary from University to University and are mostly a shade of red but can be any colour. Surrey’s are a relatively sensible dark red but my Sheffield gown is scarlet, and Heriot-Watt’s is magenta, Leeds’s is green, York’s is grey, etc.

This all makes the academic procession rather colourful of course, and I hope adds a bit to the spectacle. After all the effort they have put in the students deserve a bit of a spectacle.