July 8, 2015, by Tilly Potter

Graduation!

Yesterday I graduated from the University of Nottingham, so my undergraduate journey has officially ended! It feels really strange to say that. Fortunately, I’m sticking around in Nottingham until September to earn a bit of money, so I have a while until I’ll start getting all emotional about leaving! Here’s how my graduation day unfolded.

My ceremony was at 10am. Although I was already around in Nottingham and not travelling up specifically for the occasion, I still had to get up much earlier than I normally would so I could get to campus in plenty of time to get my gown fitted and find my seat. As you can see below, the gowns for my degree (a BSc) were black with a blue ribbon around the hood. I’ll admit I didn’t feel entirely comfortable in my gown to start off with – the mortarboard (or hat, for simplicity!) was a bit small and kept sliding off my head! I’d managed to come prepared with hairpins, however, so got my mum to attach a load to keep it in place. However, once I arrived at the ceremony it turned out the hat needed to be removed, so I had to stand by the door and slowly remove all the hairpins!

The ceremony itself was really nice although it did involve a lot of clapping. Afterwards I got some more photos with the family and my boyfriend, whose own graduation was today (I’ll be nice and won’t embarrass him with any pictures!). This included me trying to get photos of me throwing my hat in the air which was only semi-successful: I think the photo below is probably the best! We then went over to a marquee for some nibbles and farewells.

As the day was still reasonably young, my parents decided to make the most of being in this strange new land of Nottinghamshire by driving us to have a look at Southwell. This included visiting the beautiful Minster and gardens. The weather was pretty variable but we got some nice sunshine in the end!

To round off a lovely day, what better place to go than Annie’s burger shack? I somehow managed a whole ‘Broadway’ burger and most of a mouth-watering chocolate brownie with ice-cream. I’d been telling my parents about Annie’s since the start of my degree and was glad they could finally enjoy the incredible burger experience for themselves!

Whether you’ve had a graduation, have one coming up or if it’s in the fairly distant future, I hope you also have a really special day to celebrate with your friends and family! It was a lovely experience and I can’t wait to do it all again when I finish my master’s degree in just over a year’s time – if all goes well!

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