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no one looked twice and I thought about what had been recognised. Not the late nights. Not the doubt. Not the questions that had no answers.

Just the completion. Just the compliance.
This is not weakness — it is human. The problem is not ceremony itself, but the way it is weaponised. Institutions use it to mask inequality, to distract from debt, to sell prestige. The ceremony becomes a product. The scroll becomes a receipt.

There is also a deeper discomfort: the ceremony often celebrates the institution more than the individual. The speeches praise the legacy, the donors, the faculty. The graduate is a prop — a symbol of success, not a subject of it, the ritual flatters the system, not the learner.

And yet, outside these institutions, there are other forms of ceremony. Quiet ones, personal ones. A parent placing a hand on a shoulder, a friend saying “I’m proud of you,” perhaps... a moment of reflection, alone, with a cup of tea and a sense of completion and the question "what's next"? These are not marketable. They are not photographed, but they are real.

In my own work, I once honoured ceremony. I built ritual from lived experience. I shaped thresholds, wax seals, symbolic motifs, but now, I shift toward realism, toward plain testimony. Toward the unadorned ledger of learning, perhaps that may be down to age more than anything else. The ceremony is still there — but it is quieter, more honest and no longer beholden to institutional theatre.

This chapter marks that transition, from performance to presence, from recognition to reckoning, from scroll to story.

Ceremony is not neutral. It is a performance, choreographed, rehearsed and often hollow. The graduation stage, the honorary scroll, the handshake from a dignitary, these are not acts of learning, but acts of recognition. And recognition, in this system, is conditional. It depends on compliance, timing, and optics.

I recollect my Graduation out of a number I had the option to attend, in latter years. I decided to refrain from the performance and just accept via the postal service. I had a copy of the VHS, the ornamental teddy bear ceramic all with it's own cap and gown, with a name plate one could have engraved with the title of the 'Major', with date, it was one of many commercial enterprises present.

The ceremony was held in a hall I’d never entered before. Rows of chairs, a lectern, a banner. The air was rehearsed. They called it a rite of passage and a moment to honour achievement. But the speeches were generic. The names were read quickly. The scrolls were handed without eye contact.

I looked around and sat beside people I’d never spoken to before, we had shared modules, deadlines, corridors, but not stories and definitely not the struggles we had experienced.

When my name was called, I walked onto the stage following the previous one, we were like a bottle bang waiting to go up on stage. From one side of the stage to the other, I took the scroll and I nodded and I left the stage.

The applause was brief, mostly down to any family member that could attend, this helped and was appreciated. The photographs were staged. The cap and gown was returned a little later.

Later, I stood in the carpark, holding the scroll in a plastic folder,