A Boise State graduation time like no other, with strange days for seniors and families
“Alright Boise State class of 2020, it’s time to brace ourselves for the weirdest week of our lives.”
I tweeted that on Monday, and I’m sure there were hundreds feeling the same way.
As someone whose main identity has been “student” for the past 16 years, it is unimaginable that I submitted all of my final presentations and exams from my bedroom. My last classroom Zoom meeting was last week, and for me, college is over now.
Like many college seniors — and even high school graduates — I expected to bust out of ExtraMile Arena on campus Saturday in an overly large blue robe — covering my carefully picked outfit — having fully rounded out my academic career and extracurricular involvement. I was bracing myself for a ceremony that was going to feel like it was 10 hours long, just for five seconds on a projector and, most likely, a mispronounced name.
But it was going to be an opportunity to sit with my friends one last time, and the chance for my mom to see me graduate.
Instead, I am reflecting on how strange and isolating the coronavirus pandemic has made our lives. Rather than enjoying the pomp and circumstance with fellow grads, rather than celebrating with my mom and friends, I will be sitting at home and tuning in to an online event playing in the background while working in my capacity as a part-time Idaho Statesman reporter.
Since Idaho’s colleges and universities decided to go online for the spring semester — no doubt a good and prudent decision — I have spoken directly to only one professor and seen a few fellow students who are neighbors. For an educational system that thrives on an in-person experience, this switch has been jarring.
Even though I was spending a shorter amount of time on campus than I was my freshman year, it is odd to think I won’t be there anymore. I didn’t plan my last meeting in the Student Union Building. I wasn’t relieved at the last time I had to pay for parking. I didn’t celebrate the last Testing Center visit or get nervous about presenting my senior capstone project.
We didn’t get to finally “go out into the world” as graduates. We just went.
I would be lying if I said I don’t care about a symbolic ceremony when the weight of all the “lasts” is so hyped and so personal. As a first-generation immigrant who is the first to graduate from an American college, the personal is very real. As a student who has created relationships in multiple departments, the connections are real. As a daughter whose father passed away before he could even see me graduate high school, each life achievement makes all of my mom’s sacrifices worth it. And it would have been so exciting to have her there.
Spending this week away from almost everyone who’s been with me on this part of life’s journey holds many somber implications I know I am not alone in feeling.
The celebrations aren’t just what we see in movies, but a legitimate milestone to acknowledge the time, energy, money and human interaction it takes to earn this achievement.
The sudden absence of the professors and classmates I have had such a unique experience with in academia is still hard to grasp — or explain.
However, despite all these losses, despite this new landscape we’re encountering, I am impressed with the ability of my graduating class to rise above and try to stay connected. This is what I chose to focus on for my speech at the Graduating Student Leaders ceremony — a now video-only celebration of students who have filled leadership roles and shown certain abilities during their time on campus.
Many students packed up, and left the state or even country, leaving us all to resort to Zoom sessions instead of lecture halls. But students and faculty have stayed connected as best they can. And being connected remotely — even while far apart — has helped make “the weirdest week of our lives” feel at least a little better.
I am thankful that Boise State, and other higher-education institutions in Idaho, have done their best to flip the narrative on a ceremony that has been the same for centuries. Making quick, time-sensitive decisions is never easy, but everything was done in an attempt to preserve the traditions of graduation as much as possible.
It is my hope that the class of 2021 won’t have to go through this. I hope the graduation of spring 2020 will be a footnote, just one story we will get to tell for the rest of our lives — in what might be a long list of weird stories to come.
This story was originally published May 8, 2020 at 2:03 PM.
