Graduation ideas

[sabby64]

Okay, here's the situation. Brandon is graduating next week with a degree in Computer Science Technology at NAIT, after 2 years of working his butt off. He has put hundreds of hours into his projects at school, and hasn't complained once about the amount of work he ever has to do. He's been really busy for the past couple months because of these projects, and though helping him out and getting involved I can safely say I would never be able to handle the amount of homework he ever has at one time.

The thing is, noone in his family sees graduation as important. When he graduated from high school they didn't do anything besides go to the ceremony. And I know they have no plans on celebrating his graduation from college either. My family is SUPER big on graduation and school, for my high school graduation family traveled up from all over the place, we had a huge party and barbecue, and I got money and presents and cards from everyone because they were so proud. Add that to being the first one in my family to go to University, and school milestones are a huge deal to us.

I don't understand why his family doesn't seem to care about their sons accomplishments, same as he doesn't seem to understand why I find them such a big deal. I really want to make his graduation special, and I wanted to do something nice for him, like find a present to give him, such as a drawing or something small from the store. I also wanted to do something fun to celebrate like going out for dinner or something similar. I'll be there on Friday and we'll have until the 22nd until we go back home, where there will be no time to do anything like that. I don't have much time to organize something super huge, I just want a small cute way to make him feel special, because I'm super proud of him and I think that he has accomplished something amazing.

Any ideas on how I can make his graduation this week really special?

[nicole]

... in england we're not big on graduation either but I will try my best!

Maybe you could get a congratulations banner and a small cake and have a little graduation party just the two of you? doesn't have to be huge, just something to show that you think it is a big deal and how proud you are of him?

or maybe a graduation build-a-bear or similar if you don't have time to have a little party?

[Lunar Snow]

Hi,

I've really great things about NAIT for computer programs (I used to live in Alberta)--he should be really proud of himself.

I'm about middle of the road with this. My immediate family attended my graduation and gave me presents, etc., while my extended family had little tea parties for me and some gifts if they lived nearby (or they contributed to the trip to return to my university for the graduation, which was really helpful since it was far away and had multiple expenses to get to), some also streamed the graduation ceremony online and gave me phone calls. I would be upset if there wasn't celebration and recognition (we do like our celebrations) and am happy that my family has embraced and recognized my achievements (and I do have presents and photos I treasure and some extra cash really helped out), but I haven't ever had any huge parties with lots of family coming (that sounds memorable, though). I also totally get that you want to help him celebrate it, since his family is so lack-lustre about it (in my opinion, it is a major milestone in one's lifetime and should be marked). My SO just graduated today, actually, and he was being kind of wishy-washy about his parents coming with a "well, they'll come if they have nothing better to do" attitude. So, I've been pestering him about it for awhile and finally was going to text his mom about it last night (he and I hadn't talked about it recently and I was pretty sure the issue was that he was downplaying how much he wanted them to come, not them avoiding attending), but I talked to him first and he said that his parents were coming (and today, he said they took pictures and went to brunch...and that he was really happy they were there).

A gift I really liked was that my sister and Mom brought an official degree frame (there were different price points and types of material the frame was made of and then it had gold or silver embossing of my university's name on the glass) from my university and then had it matted and framed by the alumni association right after the ceremony (they were there in the lobby). If you can't have it framed in-person, you could purchase the frame perhaps online and gift it to him. Here's a link to their online store I found, but I couldn't find a way to look more closely at their merchandise: https://onlinestore.nait.ca/. Frames could be a bit pricey, but I wonder if you could get him a nice pen, a business card holder, a shirt, etc. with NAIT's crest on it--it's nice to have something to be able to keep in the long-term. To add onto nicole's idea, you could have a graduation Build-a-Bear made up and purchase a patch or transfer of NAIT's crest and iron/ sew it onto the bear's regalia (or, you could probably get thick canvas and copy the crest with felt or indelible pens to save money). I like the idea of a graduation cake and I think flowers would also be nice (you can get the florist to make up the bouquet with a ribbon in his school colour/s).

[sabby64]

A gift I really liked was that my sister and Mom brought an official degree frame (there were different price points and types of material the frame was made of and then it had gold or silver embossing of my university's name on the glass) from my university and then had it matted and framed by the alumni association right after the ceremony (they were there in the lobby). If you can't have it framed in-person, you could purchase the frame perhaps online and gift it to him. Here's a link to their online store I found, but I couldn't find a way to look more closely at their merchandise: https://onlinestore.nait.ca/. Frames could be a bit pricey, but I wonder if you could get him a nice pen, a business card holder, a shirt, etc. with NAIT's crest on it--it's nice to have something to be able to keep in the long-term. To add onto nicole's idea, you could have a graduation Build-a-Bear made up and purchase a patch or transfer of NAIT's crest and iron/ sew it onto the bear's regalia (or, you could probably get thick canvas and copy the crest with felt or indelible pens to save money).

I love that idea, but unfortunately they're not having the ceremony until April so that everyone is involved and just not the people who graduated in December So I don't know if he is going to be receiving his degree or not. I'll have to look into it for April though