Graduating from Monash

November 26th, 2023 (10 months ago) • 3 minutes

I officially graduated today. It was a hectic journey, but I reached the end.

It was an early day for me. After arriving around 8:45 am, I went ahead to register and collect my gown. There were quite a lot of people since today was the last day of the graduation ceremony for 2023.

I took some pictures around the hotel with my family and then proceeded to the hall.

Seated within the graduating class of 2025

In the hall, I met up with some of my friends and my cousin, who is in the same course, and we chatted for a while. There was a guy who is working at Shopee, and I was surprised to hear that Shopee's work culture is quite intense - working until 9 pm daily with no work-from-home culture. We also talked about future career plans and how we are going to spend our holidays.

There was a live orchestra (albeit a small one) playing background and classical tunes. It was pretty nice to listen to.

At 10.00am, the ceremony started with some speeches, and then the graduates were called up to the stage to receive their scrolls. The wait was pretty long for data science graduates, as we were seated in the last row. I spent most of my time chatting with my neighbors and on my phone.

Finally, it was my turn to go up. I was informed that I am graduating as the Best Graduate in my course, and I was pretty surprised. I took a peek at what others were doing when they got up on stage and followed suit.

My name was called. I walked towards the dean. We exchanged handshakes and had a brief conversation about how I am doing and how Monash supported me. We took a picture, and then I went down.

Three years of hard work culminated in 15 seconds of recognition today.

Shortly after, my friends, GW, S, and Y, came by to congratulate me. My colleagues from ML also dropped by to show support. I got flowers, gifts, and bears from them. I am really thankful for them and for their support.

I took some more pictures with my family and friends and then headed to Monash campus to take pictures with the school as the background. We spent quite some time here, and I would say it's definitely worth it as it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Around 3 pm, I went back to the hotel to return my gown and collect my degree certificate. I reached home about 4pm and crashed into bed, as I was pretty tired.