Across the country, dewy-eyed members of the class of 2025 are getting their moment in a cap and gown. But they’re not the only ones.
Some students who received their diplomas in 2020 are now taking that ceremonial walk across the stage, five years after COVID shut down in-person graduation ceremonies in so many schools.
This past weekend, some members of Wellesley College’s COVID class of 2020 officially “graduated”
Here & Now producer Kalyani Saxena was one of them, and she reflected on that rite of passage with host Asma Khalid.
What was it like to walk across the stage?
“It was super strange, but also wonderful. There were so many people who it seemed like I’d seen them yesterday, but then you had really clear reminders that time had passed. There was one person who walked across stage and had a toddler on her hip, and so that was kind of a great indicator of just how much life we’ve lived since.”
You spoke with your parents before the ceremony, and they expressed excitement about the moment but also sadness because your grandparents couldn’t witness it. What kind of moment was it for your parents?
“It was really lovely to hear, but there was also this sense of loss shadowing us the whole day because my grandparents were originally going to come from India and my grandfather has since passed and my grandmother can’t travel anymore, and so ultimately it was just the two of my parents, and it was lovely. But I think that’s one of the things I still think about like, ‘yes, this was a moment, but there’s still all these things that we lost and that we won’t be able to get back.’”
Did walking across the stage bring some closure to the pandemic?
“So that moment actually didn’t because it was so anticlimactic you just kind of dash across the stage, and I have to say they did kind of butcher my name, so that took me out of the moment a little bit, but, you know, now I feel like I really have had the classic graduate experience. There was a moment during the ceremony where they had someone sing our alma mater song, and it was really beautiful and it was something that the graduates of 2020 had sung at a sort of fake commencement that we did five years earlier.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Kalyani Saxena produced and edited this segment for broadcast with Michael Scotto. Scotto also adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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