Hey, if you’ve only got lemons, make lemonade! Due to financial constraints, the Department of Geography had no money to fund a Grad Student Appreciation event this year—so Geography staff pitched in and made one possible.
The Graduate Student Celebration kicked off on Tuesday 4/21 afternoon with a Power Point presentation of our grads, including their pictures, awards in the past year, and, cough, a bit of humor. Thanks to Mo Lovegreen for the presentation layout, Bill Norrington for the text, and Dylan Parenti for getting the presentation up and running (and to grad student Laura Harrison for some comic relief at her expense!). All of the staff pitched in to provide goodies for the occasion—and the surfeit of sweets was offset by 100 lemons, provided by your editor (no reflection on his view of grad students…).
Professor Phaedon Kyriakidis, our Vice Chair, kicked the event off with an informal speech which pointed out that the grads are the Department’s raison d’ être, and that he would actually give them something for the occasion—fewer lab assignments in his class this quarter, which he dared other faculty to match!
OK, so some of the goodies weren’t home-made, the doughnuts were on offer, and the lemons were home-grown freebies. But we tried! Geog staffers are well aware that many of their jobs depend on the fact that we have such a fine graduate student program. So here’s to our stellar grad students. And we hope that they found creative uses for the lemons…You betcha!
