not attending the hooding ceremony?

Many of my friends have opted out of attending their own PhD hooding ceremonies. This inspite of my earnestly urging that they not miss this once in a lifetime event and just enoy this one day to the fullest as it represents a very important day of their lives. I attended mine and in retrospect I feel it was an amazing experience that I will always remember. I hope to, through this share with you my thoughts as to why one should not "not attend" their hooding ceremony.

PhD is such a long drawn process that one usually becomes numb to the passage of time.
The first two years we try and finish most of the coursework while trying to find a suitable topic t work on. We perhaps write our first few conference or journal papers. Then many of our friends graduate with masters, find jobs and move on in their lives while we remain still quite far from our goal. Generations of MS students come and go and each year a new set of students graduate, reminding us that we have chosen a different path. My unwitting relatives and friends' parents tell me its time to get setteled in life and the it is imperative to find a job and get married. Some ask questions like, "How long does it take to do a PhD?" or "Why do a PhD, does it get you a high paying job?".

Need for emotional support gravitates us to other empethatic PhD students and soon we become part of a small clique of the like-minded. Before we realize another year passes by and the next graduation arrives. We are probably struggling hard to find a topic at this point - nothing seems to sound good to our advisors. This is perhaps the first time that we question oversleves "Why the hell am I doing this PhD while my friends are busy earning money and getting married? Is it really worth it?" In the next year a few of our friends will perhaps drop their PhD ambitions and start working forced by economic, social or emotional pressures.

We eventually find a topic for proposal defense and select a committee. Scheduling a date that suits every committe member seems to be a harder task than the PhD itself. One day we find ourselves definding our proposal and then starts the final phase, finishing up the PhD! We now see the end in sight - some light at the end of the tunnel. Time just seems to pass by and before we know it another year has passed. The next graduation cenremony comes and we wonder "where did all the time go?" We see some unknown faces in their PhD hoods and motivate ourselves to work harder and graduate that year.
Many of us start wondering what after a PhD? Academia or industry?

Towards the end of the PhD starts perhaps the most frustrating part - looking for jobs or the university application process. We have specialized and made ourselves experts in a very narrow area and there seem to be very small number of places and it seems like whats the point of a PhD - noone wants to offer us a job!!! It often takes several months to find a decent job. During this time comes our defense and writing the thesis followed by the thesis editor's never ending changes and wading through the university red tape.

Through all this we have numbed ourselves to quite a few things and learnt to be patient and persistant. PhD is an amazing process. It changes us fundamentally - the way we think and react, our priorities in life, our confidence and several other aspects. As humans we tend to focus more on the negatives than the positives. What first comes to mind is just our arguments with our advisor, the frustration of finding jobs, dealing with the unversity beaurocracy, realization that what we are doing is not of great significance to life universe and everything and so on. It is natural that at the end of the PhD process most of us are quite tired. So when the day comes to attend the hooding ceremony an apathy sets in.

Some say, "I hate my advisor and I would rather not get hooded by that $#$@%$." Others say, "Dude, I dont care. I'd better do some job hunting, my OPT starts next month." I say, five years down the line, all that does not matter. We get married have kids and get busy in the humdrum of life. At that point we look back upon the times we were a PhD student and think - those were the days we had some real fun. We did not have money but we had time, we could do whatever we wanted, when we wanted. As years roll by only one symbol remains that summarises our PhDs - the hooding ceremony photo and our degree. It reminds us of all the sweet memories and time we had, now that advisor's idiosyncracies do not matter any more.

The USC PhD ceremony was amazing. As I stood in the line with other PhD students it felt wonderful. It felt like a logical culmination point for all my efforts through the years. I felt a sense of pride and memories rushed through my mind - my first days, my nascent ambitions and view of thw world then and now. Suddenly I felt I had grown. Wearing that PhD gown I felt an immense sense of pride - I had survived the PhD process. I would be called a Dr. henceforth. There was a lot of happiness around me and tons of smiling faces. In the PhD line waiting for the ceremony to begin I met a lot of aquiantances whom I had only met once or twice and yet there seemed to be a bond that tied us - the PhD process.

The ceremony itlsef was quite nice. One line that I will always remember from the faculty speech addressing all PhDs was "today you become our peers, from today you become our equals." It is a great feeing to know that the teachers who taught you once, now consider you their peer. One thing I realized that day is that, throughout my PhD I never had a sort of culmination point. Everything sort of slowly proceeded towards completion and soon I was working while making my thesis corrections. My PhD defense itself was attended by a few and all of my peers and teachers and I presented in an hour, all that I had done in the last 4 years. I received congratualtions from a few and by the next day I was busy searching for jobs. The PhD hooding ceremony provides a sense of completion - a day when you can reflect back on your efforts, a day when the University recognises and applauds your efforts. Missing this important day that has been especially engineered for you based on temporary frustration, anxieties and dissapointments - is very short term thinking.

I believe that attending the PhD hooding ceremony is a wonderful experience if you look at it in a positive manner and that day will mark an important day in your PhD memories in the years to come.