At 8:15 yesterday morning, I met my friends at the corner. After exchanging pleasantries and complaining about our hangovers, we took in each other's outfits. Dana made fun of me for having my robe zipped up. "No one zips up their robe," she said. "It's cold. I think it came this way," I retorted. I unzipped it. Jordan was missing his tassel, Fiona had sweatpants on under her dress, and no one knew what the gold cords were for.

Jordan also had some extra fabric on his sleeves, big squares dangling off the edges. "Look at these stupid squares. They must have forgotten to cut them off," he said. But then we spotted someone across the street with the same dangling squares and concluded that it must be a Masters degree thing. A whole nother degree and all he got was a few extra square inches of sleeve.

The outfits of the administration, on the other hand, were much more obviously not manufacturing errors: fancy octagonal hats (twice the sides!), sparkling medallions, colorful hoods, scepters and sundry other embellishments. And yet, each ornament's meaning was just as lost on us as that of Jordan's fancy sleeves. What was meant to be profound symbolism resolved instead as profound silliness.

Here we were, having struggled our way to a degree or two, being inspired by a man in a silly hat to go forth and change the world. No one, apparently, has ever been inspired enough to do away with the silly hats.

That may be for good reason though. The silly hats bestow some humility on us. You may have loads of accomplishments each symbolized by some extra fabric or splash of color, but no one knows what they mean, and plus, you're still wearing a silly hat.

Unfortunately, no one knew when to throw them in the air.

Why didn't we throw our hats?