Did I hear the Gaudeamus?

I have graduated. I won't talk about Tuesday because Tuesday was a day of nothing-much and research that I will always come back to for a while, so it isn't important. Wednesday, yesterday, however, is another matter entirely.

I am not quite sure whether the day went well, or if it went badly. I am in two minds about the whole thing - negative and positive. I suppose there are essences of these two things in everything.

I think that the graduation, not just the ceremony itself, but the whole day, just highlighted the absolute disorganisation that haunts the very foundations of the University of Portsmouth, like the spirit of termite who forgets how much it eats and ruins the very fibre of what the University stands on; it is eaten from the inside by disarray and confusion. Firstly, we arrived at the Guildhall in Portsmouth and walked down to the Park Building, which is right behind it - here is where we picked up our gowns. To say this is understating the matter entirely; the wait was lengthy, weighty. But this wasn't my main gripe with it - I didn't expect to be able to get things yesterday without queueing. But then again, should we have to queue? Perhaps if the University had organised itself better, there should have been less standing in line (as is English thing to do - we queue patiently furious).

'Line' is not the right word. We arrive and there is no one at Park to direct us anywhere. There are two purple stands in amongst a bustling throng of people, on each it says Graduation Enquiries - these are people, I thought, who are just queueing up to ask questions. So instead I followed the sign saying "return gowns --->" on the Park Building. Obviously, it wasn't where you picked up the gowns, but they told me they are in a big room at the other end of the corridor. Anyway, it transpired that the Graduation Enquiries thing was actually the queue for gowns. Should it have not said "PICK UP YOUR GOWNS HERE", or perhaps "PICK UP YOUR GOWNS HERE" - but I think

PICK UP YOUR GOWNS HERE

would have worked much better. I cannot believe that University didn't have the ingenuity to specify where exactly we were supposed to pick up the gowns. Perhaps it was the final intellectual test, an initiation for the ceremony later; if you can't find the gown-place, you don't graduate. I imagine it was just stupidity on the University's part, though. I said that 'line' was not the right word, because the crowd that was moving as one thing with hundreds of shuffling feet near the "graduation enquiries" was a queue for gowns, but it didn't particularly look like a queue, or a line. It was the complete antithesis of a line: a mass, a blob, a quivering scab, which bottlenecked as we found out that it did turn into line when we had to be filtered down through a stairway into the belly of Park. Here the queue was a line. The effect, however, was one not dissimilar to trying to push a cube through a smaller, triangular hole. A bloody mess.

This was done, and we got our gowns in time. We were missing mortarboards. Another queue. Why did we bother wrapping tape measures round our heads? The mortarboard collection point was in a gazebo set up in a car park, with lots of cardboard boxes full of the stupid hats. Mine didn't fit. When I asked the girl helping me if she had a different size, she said 'yes, one'. One other size. So, like I asked previously, why put myself through another potentially complex-forming thing like head measuring? Now I think I've got a big head. 60cm circumference. Is that bad? Do I now need to look up 'average head measurements' on Google? Best not; people would think I was starting up some phrenologically-based eugenics scheme. Instead, I will just retain the image of my head as one which is big and misshapen. Asteroid head. I know it's not, but I'm sure you understand what I mean.

The ceremony itself, in Guildhall, was possibly one of the most boring things I have sat through in all my life. It was absolutely interminable. It was also very hot and stuffy in that hall. And, though the names of graduands and diplomates were read out quickly, it seemed to be a rather prolonged experience, during which I suffered:

Bum-ache - a terrible aching in the buttocks resulting from sitting on cheap seats for too long; cannot be dispelled by 'shifting'

Paranoid mortarboard syndrome - in which the sufferer can do nothing but check the mortarboard they are wearing; one notable symptom is constant tassel arrangement (or CTA)

Actual catastrophic tinnitus - an ache in the ears, occurring when in close proximity with loud, often piercing noise; patients often report that girls sitting directly behind them 'wooping' and the onset of ACT occur at the same time

Yawning - a large intake of breath, indicative of apathy; thought to have a 'cooling' effect on the brain and body

Restive indecision in the lower limbs - in a resting state of mind, the constant moving of the legs into different positions; causes are unknown

I'm sure I suffered a number of other pieces of annoying behaviour while I was there, but they are so annoying that I can't remember them.

I must say, though, that it wasn't really that terrifying going up onstage to shake the vice-chancellor's hand. Sheila Hancock (she is the Chancellor the University, how brilliant) was out of action for hand-shaking because she had hurt the wrist of her right hand, or just the right hand itself. She also made a lovely speech afterwards, saying that us students - graduands I suppose - should be very proud of ourselves, because if we can do this horrible walk, up onto the stage, and then all around the hall for everybody to see, we can do anything. Well, if I wasn't that scared of it, does that mean I won't be able to do that much of anything? We'll see. She also said that we are the educated "elite" - that we have been to university, and therefore are 'worth' a whole lot more than the "vacuous celebrities" on the red carpet wearing "borrowed designer dresses"; she went on to say that us in Britain have an "obsession with the mediocre", or something like that. Her speech was very nice. I think I might order a DVD of the ceremony, not to watch me raise my eyebrows to the camera onstage (one of the more minute forms of horseplay on the stage - one person purposely tripped up the stairs onto the stage; though Sheila Hancock said she enjoyed the "pratfall", I just thought it was a prat falling over), but moreover to listen to that speech again. It was inspirational.

The evening was filled with curry (I had a madras), drinking (I stayed and went out with Alex and Mark), walking around (we met the most indecisive people from the Film Studies course), and a failed botch at visiting a strip club (£10 entry does not bode well for the price of drinks therein). We went to bed when it was light. So that was good. The day ended well, despite the fact that it did not particularly start as if it would be a barrel of laughs. And to think I was toying with the idea of not going to graduation at all! Yes it was awfully boring, loftily so, but no: it wasn't all that bad. All you need is a little tolerance to get you through the day.

And there was no group on the steps of Guildhall, throwing their mortarboards in the air, smiling, laughing, kissing each other, and breaking down into a postgraduate orgy that wouldn't dissolve for hours. That's illegal in Portsmouth.