Convocation
Today was the first day of the graduate orientation, which will last all week. In the morning the Dean of Graduate Studies gave us a welcome speech, with pictures showing us where Caltech is in relation to: 1) the universe, 2) the world, 3) the state, 4) LA, using satellite photographs, radar pics, and Google Earth– in fact, that part of the speech was pretty much the same he gave when I came down here the first time for the Grad preview program. Then we had a free lunch, and in the afternoon I attended the convocation.
The convocation was… unique. The first speaker, in addition to being a Nobel laureate, has a ridiculous amount of honorary degrees (30, I believe), is on boards of several organizations and universities, directs an interdiscplinary research center at CalTech, is a political activist, and still does research. The second speaker has slightly less credentials, but still very impressive, and the final speaker was Michael Browne, the guy who discovered Xena/Eris, the object that led to the creation of the distinction between planets and ‘dwarf’ planets. It was obvious that the arrangers were trotting out the big names to impress us. And it worked 
Possibly relevant posts:
- grad schools— the final list! (9/28/2005)
- On UCB (5/21/2004)
- NRC Rankings (12/25/2004)