After I had finished my final exams at University on a Friday afternoon in the middle of June 1975 I was in a bit of a rush to get packed up and out of Cardiff.
It was my twenty-first birthday weekend and I was starting a full time job at Rugby Borough Council on the next day, the 16th June. After that I never went back, not even to my degree ceremony, which seemed a lot of unnecessary expense and not terribly important at the time, my certificate was rather impersonally sent to me through the post and I always rather regretted that since.
Luckily my own children both went to University and both had rather nice degree ceremonies that I was able to attend. The first was Sally on 16th July 2007 at Warwick University and the second was Jonathan at Nottingham on 14th July 2009.
Ten Other things I regret (no particular order, except the first):
Not visiting my dad more often before he died
Swapping my Robinson’s Gollywog badges for other less collectible things
Going to see Bernard Manning (twice) and finding him funny
Stealing my sister’s commemorative decimal coin pack and spending it
Not keeping in touch with people
Arguing with family over trivial things
Sacking people because I could (especially not nice)
Not going to the Athens 2004 Olympic Games
Buying a useless collection of lead soldiers (ok, actually 3 sets!)
Wasting hundreds or even thousands of £s on beer and wine
Age of Innocence 
Tie for the first one and not for the second?
I didn’t want to go to my degree ceremony, probably for the same reasons as you, and just seemed like a load of show for the sake of it. But my parents got really peevish about it, and it turned into a family outing as my godmother wangled herself an extra invitation from an old friend who turned out to be a geography lecturer there.
Here’s my grad pic:
http://everypicturetellsone.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/not-rich-not-poor/
What a posh certificate you had though, mine was in boring old English.
I’ve still got my decimal coin set. Does the last regret on the list mean that you are teetotal now?
Thanks for the link – it’s a good story. Local Authority grants were brilliant weren’t they? I seem to remember that I got 90% and I had to work in between terms to make up the rest. That decimal coin set is probably quite valuable now. Teetotal – not yet!
Forgot to mention that I didn’t attend my masters degree ceremony though – not sure if my parents had any idea what it was so they weren’t interested, and neither was I. Even though the ceremony was only a ten minute bus ride/30 minute walk away.