Graduation Day was the best day of my life. Graduation day is a day that hangs over you as soon as you sign those registration documents at the beginning of the academic journey. Throughout my academic journey, graduation day was part of many serious conversations about the future. There were days I would be excited thinking about how it would feel to finally be awarded that degree. There were also days when it felt like graduation day would never arrive. The latter days were hard. These were the days I needed the most support, and my mother, my lover, my friends, all came through for me. For this, I will forever be grateful.
My PhD journey was not a walk in the park. I earned my degree through blood, sweat, and tears. There were many sleepless nights. There were good cry sessions. There were moments I debated quitting. I didn’t. I persisted. Taking it one day at a time. Now, of course, I see the trying times of the academic journey as important lessons. Mostly a lesson in perseverance. The PhD journey is a humbling process. It is a journey where you learn just how little you know. It is also a journey that teaches you about yourself, where you must own your weaknesses and try to work on them, and to also understand your strengths and to build on them. Your strengths are your foundation, after understanding them, you can then deal with your weaknesses.
I started planning graduation day immediately after I received my results that I was to be awarded the degree. The first thing I needed of course was an outfit for the graduation. I commissioned Sheyi Taylor to make me a suit with a jacket that has a train. I needed a train because I knew there would be stairs, and a train looks good on stairs. I also wanted to pay homage to my thesis topic, my research was on “same-sex marriage in South Africa” and so I thought a train would be fitting for the occasion – resembling a wedding dress. The train also represents what my mother called “imfundo enomsila” in the Xhosa language, which translate to “an education with a tail”, meaning an education that doesn’t end, an ongoing education. It all made sense to me. For my outfit, I knew that I wanted a bright fabric, and a fabric that would be in conversation with the red gown I knew I would wear. I wanted print because I love print, it is also a fabric that is associated with “African” aesthetics and I wanted to represent that. It was also important to be a bit (ok, maybe a lot) Camp – to have fun with the whole graduation idea, because as we all know, it can be rather stuffy.
The graduation moment is very short. It is a fleeting moment. Your name is called, you go up and receive your degree, you are then capped and hooded, and then you walk off the stage. It all goes very fast, and I think layering the meanings attached to the graduation makes it last longer. I think part of the reason some students do a “performance” when they go on stage is because of the fleeting-moment-ness of it all, they want it to last longer, they want it to be more. Many students struggle to get to graduation, and receiving a degree is a moment of triumph that they want recognised. Not to mention that many students are the first graduates in their families, and the achievement elevates the whole family.
My family came to watch me graduate. This was important to me, and it was important to them. I am the first PhD graduate in my family. There would have been many before me, I am sure because there are clever and hard workers in my family, but because of apartheid laws that prevented black people from university education, they couldn’t access the kind of education they desired and deserved. My mother is a champion of education. She encouraged me throughout my academic career to study hard and never give up. It was a special moment for my mother to witness me being awarded my doctorate. In many ways, she was also being awarded for the hard work she did raising a child.
I hope you enjoy these images from my graduation day in December 2019. It was a magical day and I will remember it forever.
Look out for Part 2 where I will write more in depth about the planning of the graduation celebrations. As you can imagine, there were huge celebrations.
Photographs by Mukendi Photography.
[…] is the last of the “Graduation Day” celebration trilogy ππ. The first Graduation Day celebrations were at the university, where I was crowned with my doctorate. The second Graduation […]