On Friday, we celebrated a first for the Heidmann Family — the Glendale Community College Commencement Ceremony of 2013, wherein Laurent was granted her Associate’s Degree, with Honors.
We had not been to the venue (Grand Canyon University) before, and were wise to leave early, not only so that Laurent could be ready to walk at 6:30 as directed, but so we could get a seat. The GCU arena is brand new and a lovely place to hold such an event. The stadium theater-style seating is comfortable, bright, clean, and easy to navigate – but relatively intimate, with just 5,000 seats, and I was right to suspect they would be at a premium. By the time the ceremony was underway, there were people lining the balconies and left standing in the concourse, with still more arriving all the time. The only drawback to arriving early was the jazz band that was playing before the ceremony — so loud!! We were trying to communicate via cell with Jeff, who was driving with mom, about the handicapped parking and seating availability, and it was so loud we had to give up and hope for the best. They did end up arriving 20 minutes late (there were still people streaming in at that point), and by a miracle of God’s providence, were awarded two front-row seats (not far from the section where we were seated in the 2nd row from the ceiling) for their tardiness. 😉
My favorite parts of the ceremony were the guitar octet (marvelous!), and when the president asked all those who were the first in their family to attend college to stand. There were a So MANY! That was pretty emotional. Coming from a background with a fairly high college expectation (my parents both graduated from Prairie Bible College, and my dad had a Master’s in Theology; Paul’s parents are both NDSU grads; Paul has a B.S. in Math and Electrical/Electronic Engineering, and a Master’s in Math as well, while I studied Art History and Music) — it is hard to imagine what a huge accomplishment it is for a family to have their very first graduate. I felt proud for them all! And I loved the special needs graduates who went through the line first. One had begun her higher education in 1987!! What a triumph that night was for her.
The speeches were short and punchy (except that one professor who rambled a bit, and then took off his regalia in order to strike up a congratulatory tune on his guitar with a little band – which didn’t turn out to be too bad). The long part was, obviously, the awarding of diplomas. With a class of 2,105, we couldn’t have been happier that only 453 chose to attend the ceremony!! 😀 It was fun though… I mean, I’m not sure Paul was having fun the whole time, but I enjoyed hearing the families clap and cheer, hold up signs, and seeing the unique personalities of the students walking across to receive their degrees. (I am a traditionalist, so of course, anything but black pants and shoes with ties for the men makes me raise an eyebrow — I was perturbed with the dude who was walking through commencement in bermuda shorts and flip flops, but conversely highly amused by the one who wore his black gown open so we could all see his blindingly white three piece suit underneath, and walked across the stage with arms raised in victory!)
We knew right where Laurent was sitting and were following her progress through the line, so we were ready when they announced our girl’s name. The four of us up top, and Jeff and mom down below, set up quite a respectable amount of noise for only 6 people, enough that she could hear it from the stage, so we did our part to celebrate the moment, and I even got pictures, blurry though they were with the wrong lens. ((excuse me while I kick myself one more time))
After the recessional came the crazy part — exiting the building, and finding each other!! As directed we had charge of our graduate’s purse, so naturally she was without her cell phone. Everyone out in the plaza seemed to be on their phones trying to find one another, and we, short little Heidmanns that we were, felt lost in the crowd and hopeless to find our girl. Paul went on a circuit while I remained in somewhat central location with the younger two; when he finished his first search unsuccessfully, he set off once more, while I moved us to a grassy knoll, and soon enough, Laurent (who had climbed up on a wall so she could scan the crowd) found us and came running.
Joy and happy day, we were so blessed and thankful to be able to celebrate our first child’s first college graduation! And we learned a lot about how to do things the next time around. 🙂
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