Monday – Day 287
Posted on 17th May 2013
My last day on Penn’s campus. Wow. It’s been a heck of a year. However, I couldn’t go without a bit of a bang: singing for the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden!
Again up early in the morning, this time however, to get past security and the secret service in order to be allowed into Franklin Field where we would soon by joined by the Vice President. However, before he even arrived, we performed a twenty minute set for the audience that was slowly filing in, in order to keep them entertained while security was doing its work. Once the ceremony finally began, it was everything I imagined it to be. First, a formal procession of students, followed by the deans, the honorary degree recipients and of course, Joseph Biden Jr. (and his phalanx of secret service members).
The speeches were nothing particularly notable, however they made for decent listening. Biden offered little advice but his stories were interesting. Amy Gutmann tried to be inspiring and as a result sounded as her usual self. I guess we love her for things other than her speech-writing talents.
Following all of that was our big moment, or our little moment as it was: the singing of the Penn school song, “The Red and The Blue” for the VP.
As much as I don’t think Biden was paying very much attention, it was still a cool feeling.
After ‘commencement’ we took a brief lunch break, that I used to complete some errands (mailing stuff back home), before another gig that was much the same; the private engineering graduation ceremony. I hung around for a while longer after the gig was over to see some of my friends receive their diplomas, but then raced off to get a hair cut before the salon closed. From then, it was a matter of finishing of the job of packing, which took me a good while, and settling in for my last night in the apartment.
Unfortunately however, I was kept away by a certain technical challenge (that I won’t reveal here for the time being). At around 2AM I completed the interesting work and headed to sleep, excited to test it in the morning.