Gymnasium graduation is a whole thing in Sweden, and more components seem to become necessary traditions with every passing decade.

One very central part is the utspring, the “running out”, where graduating students exit the school building for the final time, en masse, and are met by their families in the school yard. Families have signs with photos of their student, often cute pictures of the student as a baby. I imagine it originally started as a way to find each other in the teeming mass of hundreds of people, and then took on a life of its own.

I kind of remember it being a DIY thing, but maybe I’ve got my nostalgia-tinted glasses on. Nowadays in any case there’s plenty of services that deliver ready-made signs with photo, text, and handle, all assembled. I’m old school, going the DIY route. Today I picked up my photo of Ingrid from the photo printing shop – and half the shop was filled with stacks of graduation signs.

One thing they have that mine won’t (not easily, at least) is a plastic cover. If we get a rainy graduation day, I’m going to have to scramble a last-minute solution. What mine will have, though, is decorations and trimmings!