Beyond Proud

You’ve seen these two before—my son and my granddaughter. Today we celebrated her graduation from CAL State University. It was the largest group of people I’ve seen in almost three years, and the closest I’ve been to such a range of folks. Not many masks in evidence. They wand you at the door and search your backpacks. Felt like a football game, or a concert. Definitely out of my comfort zone.  But people were joyful. It was time to celebrate, after all. These students had reached a milestone and were all deserving our attention and applause.

Here is what our strong hard-working young woman had to say about her past couple years:
“.…I graduated with my Bachelor’s of Science degree in Kinesiology, with an Exercise Science concentration… I made it to campus a total of 12 times, met 0 people from my graduating class, and spent a majority of my college experience in my childhood bedroom watching lectures on zoom. It was definitely not the college experience I wanted or expected, but I am beyond proud of myself for seeing it through!”

I keep this in mind as the speakers seemingly try to invoke a campus intimacy that never happened, as, one after another, they urge the graduates to stay in touch and cherish these precious memories as they go through life. And a curious thing begins to happen: bit by bit as the candidates get their diplomas and leave the stage, they just keep on walking out of the stadium, joined by their friends and families. Fewer and fewer grads go back to their seats to wait for the ceremony to end. I’ve never seen this before, and am somewhat dumbfounded by the disrespect it implies. There are hundreds of grads still waiting to walk. I confess that our group joined the exodus. We’d been in the sun and wind for two and a half hours, straining to hear people who hadn’t been coached to handle a microphone. I felt guilty, I felt I should be setting an example of how to behave, and damn, I was glad to pick up and go. But the questions this raises for me are many. Has there been some cultural shift that changed how we act at these events? is this peculiar to this school, this place? is it that people just don’t know how to behave any more? I’m also curious about what the administration thought—will they change things in the future? or is this the new norm?

Whatever the answers,  we are toasting our girl! I’m so impressed by her competence, and her willingness and ability to see things through. Here’s to all the zoom students out there, all of you who stepped up and kept going, all of you who overcame crazy circumstances way beyond your control.