Bori goes to Holland

Until now I have talked about the difficulties and joys of writing a thesis about pornography. Once you are done with it, and have gone through the thesis defense, the only thing left is to graduate gracefully from the university, with a 70-paged document on porn under your arm that you will hopefully never have to talk or write about again. At least for a while.

Okay, that doesn't seem to be that hard. No, it's not, especially since for me, coming from Hungary, graduation meant hearing my name, walking up to the dean while people clap, shaking hands, getting some diploma, and walking away. Well, if you have a similar background, there are still some surprises left if you happen to graduate in the Netherlands. The Dutch have this nice habit of each supervisor presenting each student's project - as part of the official graduation ceremony that is public. And by public I mean open for all: friends, families, pets, whatever. Each programme has its own gradution ceremony, that's why there is time to talk about everyone, as opposed to the Hungarian tradition where all programs of a faculty receive their diplomas within the same ceremony (several hundred students).

If you happen to finish an international master, like I did, you will realize, that the Graduation Ceremony is quite a significant happening. Of course, local friends and relatives show up for sure, but in most cases, there aren't any local family members. For the parents who live abroad, this happening is the real marker of their offspring having succeeded in another country, and they are so incredibly proud that they all come in person. Especially, because most of the year they haven't even seen their pretty little boy or girl. In some cases, literally the whole family including all sisters brothers uncles and aunts show up, adding up to an average of 4-5 guests per graduate.

The reason why I am saying this, is to prepare you for the fact, that in a case of a class with 25 studenst, there will be a crowd of 100-150 unknown people sitting in front of you when your supervisor describes what you have been doing in this master. In case you have written your thesis on porn, you get the idea why this gets interesting. 'What is he going to say?' 'How is he going to say it?' 'Is he going to go into detail about it?' - these are the questions that might arise in your head while you wait for the fateful moment.

I cannot talk in generalities from this point on: it is absolutely up to the supervisor to decide on which level he or she talks about someone's thesis. Some professors talk only for 2 minutes, saying only the general topic with some comments on how nice it was to work together, while others hold a 7-minute presentation, with immense details on the research project. Surprise surprise, my supervisor falls into the latter category, and has actually managed to give the longest speech of the whole ceremony about my topic. I know, 7 minutes doesn't sound so incredibly long, but the whole ceremony lasted not much more than 1 hour, so with a class of about 25, the average time spent on each student is around 3 minutes. So about 10% of our graduation ceremony was about me and my research, so basically about pornography. How did the audience handle it? Pretty well. Lot of laughing from all across the room, including us standing on the podium.

Below you can read some of the highlights, taken from my supervisor's talk.

"I have 3 theses in my hand that I have supervised. As you can see, 2 of them have a picture on the cover, the third one doesn't. Let me talk to you about this one first and tell you why this is."

(At about 2:30 of the speech, he says the P word out loud.)

"We agreed that Bori would underline that this topic was chosen by herself and not by her supervisor..."

"I am sure that there is no woman in this room, who has watched so much porn, as her"

Readers of my previous blogposts are aware of the fact that I have gone through much worse episodes than this, and was already well prepared mentally for this occasion. And I also have to admit, this was actually a pleasant experience. Of course, this is also due to the fact that I did not have to do anything, it was much more of a challenge for my supervisor to face a similar drama as I have faced in the last 6 months, by forcing an 'inappropriate' topic into an 'appropriate' context. All I had to do was to stand there and be very proud. Which I was indeed! After all, I have officially graduated from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, with distinction (whatever that means), and porn or not porn, I got a 9 for my thesis.