Phinally Done!

My doctoral diploma arrived in the mail a few days ago, which makes my PhD fully official now!

Because of COVID-19 related precautions, the Clemson “hooding” ceremony wasn’t going to have any actual hooding of the PhD graduates like there would be for a normal event, so Connie and I met up with my advisors to have our own private hooding ceremony the week before the Clemson ceremony. Having the hood put on me was the important part, so I’m not wearing the regalia.

To commemorate the occasion, Connie made me this cool ornament.

A much modified Clemson University Fall 2020 Doctoral “Hooding” ceremony was held at the Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, SC on December 16, 2020.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

There wasn’t nearly as large of a crowd at the graduation as I expected, and it seemed like maybe about half of the PhDs listed in the program were present. Made for a pretty quick ceremony. For people who couldn’t make it to the hooding ceremony, the whole thing was streamed for people to watch online (don’t let the preview image fool you, there was no hooding going on).

I show up for a few seconds at the 40:56 mark in the video.

This is the part of the ceremony where the PhD is conferred to the graduates (from Connie’s vantage point in the stands):

And this is Connie’s view of me walking across the stage:

2020 graduates were also given a nice little pin custom designed for the occasion. From the hooding ceremony program, the pin is described as “a block ‘C’ logo that was in use in 1955 when Clemson offered its first doctoral degree program. Across the C are three stripes like the ones graduates are wearing on their sleeves today.”

Although the PhD is done, work on related research continues. I still need to re-write one of the papers I wrote for my dissertation and submit it for publication. My advisor also asked me to submit an abstract based on my work to the upcoming IADR meeting, so I’ve got that to work on as well.