2010 London School of Economics Graduation

After a long night of pressing skirts and tops and preparing for our grad ceremony, we jumped out of bed at 7AM to begin getting ready for our MSc graduation. A good friend from my course is a born and bred Londoner with a great, cozy flat in Camden where she allowed a couple of us to bunk. My friend, E., made it over to London from Dublin and made up our graduation trio. While the thought of three girls getting ready in the morning seemed like a daunting task, it actually ended up working out perfectly and all of us were showered, dressed and out the door by 8:45AM.

Being that we rented our caps, gowns and hoods, we had to arrive before the ceremony to pick them up and get ready. We had a few extra minutes beforehand to take a few pictures and get comfortably settled into our seats. The ceremony was through fairly quickly, with the opening and closing speeches given by Howard Davies.

Afterwards, we had a fun reception where we were able to mingle, snack, chat and say some of our goodbyes. With many people coming in from out of the country, there were a number of people that had to depart that evening to get back to the real world. Surprisingly, many parents and spouses were there to cheer on their grads and most families went out to lunch following the reception. Since I didn’t have my family in tow, my Irish friend/roommate-for-the-night’s family adopted me as a second child and took us out for lunch in Covent Garden.

Our SPD programme was very fortunate in the fact that we all got along extremely well. While we had an after party planned at the Supper Club in London for all MSc grads, our Social Policy and Development programme planned a special outing at the Prince of Wales pub in Covent Garden. Though many people weren’t able to come (read: slept through it due to ridiculous jet lag), there were enough of us to chat for hours before finishing up at the Supper Club in Notting Hill well into the night.

Needless to say, the day was incredibly long and incredibly eventful. It’s a bit bizarre to be able to finally say that I’m an LSE alum. I never thought this day would come so quickly! It was amazing to reconnect with so many amazing people and have a few moments to really remember what an incredibly amazing year it was.

Cheers to the Class of 2010!

xoxo,