His name is Paul Watcziowksi.
Paul was not supposed to be in this photo. He is the by-product of a picture of several members of the faculty of the collegiate program from which we graduated two weeks ago. Flipping through shots on the ‘Book (Facebook to the unhip), I was pleasantly surprised to stumble on him as I had remembered a few of us speculating on his situation graduation day.
Someone remarked on his resemblance to an impotent wizard.
Someone else presumed he ate babies not out of hunger, but humor.
One girl claimed he was a member of the biomedical engineering school faculty.
While any one of these may be true, I think he is neither wizard nor murderer nor biomedical engineering professor.
I think he is brought in simply and specifically for one reason and one reason only: To attend University graduation and to look scholarly, brilliant, intriguing, storied, old.
I mean, look at the guy. Dude is made for graduation.
Every year, on a first-come-first-served basis, University presidents pay Paul a hefty sum to fly in for the day of their respective schools’ graduations and give the impression of academic splendor. Scroll up and check out the look on his face. That’s the shit-eating grin of a man being paid $1,100/hour to walk in a procession line and smile and wave to parents and students and look like a bad mofo while doing so.
Look at the conviction with which he’s holding that commencement program. Look at that beard that’s just slightly too long, and the perfectly black-dyed eyebrows contrasted against the grayish white hair on the rest of his head. Look at that bemused expression on his face. That’s not the workings of a 58 year-old out-of-work Minnesota construction worker with asthma who never graduated high school and is not looking off into the distance thinking about quantum physics, but Carl’s Jr. combo meal #6.
That’s the workings of a professional.
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