It was all about resilience. Not of the energy system this time, no. Of the planning team. Starting with the believe of the batch 18/20 in early 2020 that by the end of the year everyone would gather for a graduation ceremony, the whole process of our graduation ceremony can be considered to have lasted an entire year. Did we break a record with this? The slowest graduating batch? Mmmh.
Anyways! This year, the spirit of the batch 19/21 and especially its organization team made a joined ceremony possible. The core organization team of Lidya Gebrezgiabher and Maksuda Begum (batch 19/21) and Hamidurahman Rasuli (batch 18/20) supported by Dr. Hans Holtorf organized everything for the festivities in the university with shifting corona conformal boundary conditions. Despite everyone´s hopes to have a real-life graduation ceremony, in the last moment the nightmare of all event planers these days appeared: The decision to switch to an online event. However, the motivation to celebrate was bigger than the frustration about the pandemic-enforced changes. Thus, the team of presenters gathered under 2G plus conditions and well equipped for the full experience of a hybrid-event on Friday, 10th of December to get the show going. About 60 participants joined in and listened to heartwarming, emotional, proud and motivational speeches. Special thanks at this point to the university president Prof. Dr. Bruder, the dean of faculty V Prof. Dr. Wark, the director of PPRE Prof. Dr. Agert and of course Dr. Herena Torio, programme manager of PPRE and one of our great lecturers! Furthermore, a warm thank you to Timseabasi Thomas and Luis Baquero Salamanca who made us once more take this journey through our PPRE time with their speeches. Fun fact here: “heartwarming” was the most used adjective of the event, I´m sure!
The whole event was wonderfully framed by Lidya, Maksuda and Hamid who found warm but also humorous words for every speaker and gave the whole event a very festive touch. For the comedy part, Diana, Lidya, Hamid and I searched in the deepest corners of our folders for the best/craziest/funniest pictures and both in front of the camera and behind the scenes, the party was on fire for sure! Thanks at this point to the tech-support (Indry, Raghaw and Andreas) who maneuvered around suddenly appearing slides, non-functional pointers and several confusing moments if or which mike might be on.
At least for me personally, it was a trembling until the day before, checking the local regulations every morning, if we could meet in a private gathering, how many people would be allowed and under which conditions could we spend the evening. But somehow, there was a real happy ending to this pandemian rhapsody as we could have our first big PPRE gathering since almost two years. Even though it wasn´t a typical PPRE party with lots of music and dancing, everyone got the chance to chat, laugh and feel the typical PPRE spirit in the evening! Certainly, this day rose lots of good memories and hope for future gatherings with several batches in pandemic-wise better days!
Cheers,
Anna (batch 18/20)