Wizards and Apprentices.

To Westminster Cathedral for the graduation, which is the highlight of the academic year and always an occasion of mixed emotions as we finally have to say goodbye to our third year graduates. It's an impressive venue, even more so when every seat is filled with proud parents and friends. Most of the academics chose to process, looking like a strange collection of wizards recently escaped from a Harry Potter film set and then the three hundred or so undergraduates take it in alphabetical turns to receive their degree from Principal Naylor, officiating at his eighteenth and final ceremony.

This year was extra special as it's the first time we've had our own degree awarding powers, rather than as a subsidiary of the University of Surrey and the Sarum blue robes chosen for St. Mary's looked immaculate. Most of the girls wore impossibly vertical heels, leaving them towering above the suited and booted, well scrubbed boys as one by one they tottered and swaggered onto the platform for their moment in the sun.

And so the final cohort on the old Drama degree passed through St. Mary's and went off to make their mark in the world, whilst the wizards hung up their robes and headed round the corner to the inner sanctum of The Cardinal pub for the first beer of the summer recess.

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