Friday, May 31, 2013

Graduation Celebrations Swedish Style

I am back in Sweden and am blogging from Gothenburg.

There seems to be Swedish envy back in the USA with even an OpEd in The New York Times of a day ago by Thomas B. Edsall Why Can't America Be Sweden?, which notes the work of Daron Acemoglu of MIT. I have written several posts on a similar theme on this blog regarding the quality of life in Sweden as well as its great infrastructure.  We had the pleasure of hosting Daron, as well as his wife, Asu Ozdaglar, also of MIT, in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speakers Series.

Now is the time of high school graduations in Sweden and the graduates are dressed up and wearing sailor caps. The photos below were taken in downtown Gothenburg today.

And for photos from  a recent high school graduation that my daughter attended, but in the US, since she graduated 1 year ago.from Deerfield Academy and several friends had returned to reconnect, you can click here. The weather was quite different (cold) this year from her graduation of a year ago!

On June 12, 2013, I will be attending another graduation - that of those receiving the Master's degree from the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, where I will be delivering the commencement speech. I guess that they like me here, since I also delivered the commencement speech last year and the experience was fabulous.