Graduation: What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

petrini1

May 11

He graduated!

My son's class graduated today at JMU, in the ceremony for the College of Visual and Performing Arts. And it felt like a real triumph.

The college class of 2024 was the high-school class of 2020, the Covid Lockdown class. These were the graduates who missed out on prom, senior trips, spring concerts, the All-Night Graduation Party, awards ceremonies, AP tests, and any sense of closure to their high-school years. Their last few months of high school were spent at home alone, trying to take online classes through an unfamiliar system that students and teachers lacked sufficient technology for. To top it off, they attended their own high-school graduations sitting in their living rooms with their parents, waiting for their name to pop up on their TV screens during a televised virtual graduation ceremony.

(I'm not arguing that it should have been different. I still believe distancing was the best option to curtail the spread of the pandemic at a time before the widespread availability of viable tests, treatments, and vaccines. But I still felt bad about how much my son and his classmates missed out on.)

For four years, I've been saying we'd have to make sure he had a great experience at college graduation. And he did! The school is a big state university, but graduation ceremonies were by individual colleges rather than university-wide. Visual and Performing Arts is not a large college, so the ceremony was intimate and personal -- and not overly long. And what a treat that the professor who gave one of the addresses was actually his own advisor in his major, Music Composition. He was great, too.

After the speeches and awards, the grads switched their tassels to the other side, threw their caps in the air, and hugged and cheered. And their proud parents in the stands, including this one, were tearing up. It was great to see them finally get a graduation, and to celebrate with their friends.

We gave him a while afterward to pose for photos, make future plans with his fellow alumni, and pat each other on the back.

Then we had to go. We still had a dorm room to pack up.