I was in the first graduating class of our “new normal” COVID-19 world. We were the first to attempt to hold a classic senior week and graduation. We spent the entirety of senior year in a hybrid learning environment. We fought for months to be able to stay on campus and graduate with our peers. Needless to say, a lot of traditions had to be bent to accommodate the pandemic-era cautions of the world beyond the Hill.
When I found out they were allowing students to come back in person for the 2020-2021 school year, I was ecstatic. I desperately missed my friends and roommate that I was unexpectedly torn away from just months prior when everyone thought we would be coming back soon. We eagerly agreed to the strict rules set in place to facilitate a safe and, hopefully, long-term return to campus.
From our first day back we noticed changes in traditions we didn’t even know we had. We couldn’t go meet friends, we couldn’t have hall events, we couldn’t go into town, we were all together and yet still somehow completely isolated.
My roommate and I decided to make our own traditions. Every weekend we spent a night together watching Say Yes to the Dress projected on a bed sheet hung from a lofted bed. When we burned through every episode on Hulu, we started watching bad reality TV, musicals, gaming videos on YouTube, anything we could find to get our minds off of what was happening out there in the world beyond our tiny dorm room in Larson hall.
The other major new tradition was regular COVID testing. I lost count of the number of times I got the email congratulating me on being randomly selected for testing that week. I was happy to comply if it meant we could all stay together on campus just a little while longer. We kept holding our breaths, waiting for the seemingly inevitable email sending us home again.
But it never came. We were told to pack up our rooms when we left for winter break in case they couldn’t bring us back. When we arrived back after an online Interim, I was never more relieved to be unpacking my room for the second time in just six months.
Among the casualties of cancelled and adapted traditions that year were homecoming, fall break, Christmas Festival, on-campus Interim, study abroad, spring break, and any kind of off-campus activities or community engagement. Other smaller annual events and performances as well were forced to make changes in an attempt to discourage large gatherings and, by extension, disease transmission.
When graduation started looming, we were told to keep expectations low — that no families would be allowed to come, that everything would be live streamed instead, that there were countless plan Bs in place for every possible development — and that, even still, nothing was guaranteed.
Just weeks before our graduation date, we started getting emails about it, but not the ones we expected. Due to a decline in local and national coronavirus cases, they would be loosening restrictions for senior week after the majority of students left and, most importantly, families would be allowed on campus to watch us walk the stage. I remember the buzz this news sparked among my peers, everyone scrambling to coordinate travel for friends and family amid studying for finals. It was like waking up to find the last year had just been a horrible dream. Suddenly, we allowed ourselves to feel everything that over a hundred graduating classes before us felt.
One by one, everyone else finished their classes and started trickling out of town. Departments announced celebrations, senior week events started solidifying, we picked up caps and gowns and started making plans with our friends. All the traditions we had given up on months ago suddenly landed in our laps.
We signed up for timeslots to go up to the tower in Old Main and make our marks on the rafters. We got to hold our senior carnival on the quad. We went in shifts to steam our gowns. We received our cords from departments, organizations, and the registrar. We found our lanterns during the Illumination Ceremony. We attended our last lecture. We got St. Olaf-branded face masks to be worn on graduation day. We had the most normal week we had had since March 2020.
Finally, we got to participate in the tradition we had been looking forward to for four years: Commencement. Everyone showed up in Skog in the black caps and gowns (and masks!) that marked us as graduates, and we all lined up by last name and paraded up to the campus green where staff, faculty, family, and friends were waiting for us. It was a perfect day — the sky was clear and the weather beautiful. I remember sitting in a crowd of peers all dressed the same and focusing solely on being in the moment, the moment shared with thousands of alumni before us.
Gone were all the thoughts of quarantine, testing, fear, and isolation that had plagued us for over a year — the constant state of vigilance and worry we had adopted just to survive. Suddenly, we were just young adults sitting on the lawn, confronted with our own achievements and thoughts of our futures, like everyone who came before. We listened, we applauded, we walked, we cheered, we smiled, and we threw our caps to the sky — just like we pictured when we moved in four years prior.
“Suddenly, we were just young adults sitting on the lawn, confronted with our own achievements and thoughts of our futures, like everyone who came before. We listened, we applauded, we walked, we cheered, we smiled, and we threw our caps to the sky — just like we pictured when we moved in four years prior.”
I would be lying if I said senior year was great. It was really hard on everyone. Our entire lives were upended one week in March and nobody knew what the future held for us. We were in uncharted territory and just doing our best to keep going when the world seemed to be ending all around us. We endured the sometimes overbearing but absolutely necessary rules put in place to allow us to remain on campus when so many other schools were forced to send students home. It was far from what any of us imagined our senior year would look like, but I think we made the best of what we had.
I still feel for my friends who graduated in 2020; they didn’t get to participate in the traditions surrounding commencement at all. Their regular college life ended abruptly on a weekday in mid-March, though we didn’t know it then. Some of them were able to come back to the Hill for a mini graduation the following year, but most just received their diplomas in the mail and some thoughtful emails. Those who lived close enough got to come back for a couple of hours in June to pack up their rooms without interacting with anyone else. They didn’t get to celebrate with their friends or even say goodbye.
There’s a lot I missed out on during my last year at St. Olaf. There’s also a lot I was too preoccupied with larger issues of the outside world to really enjoy. Though it was definitely a uniquely challenging year for everyone, I am so grateful I was able to spend that time with my friends and peers by my side. That school year was definitely one for the books; traditions were made, broken, altered, and tweaked to accommodate the rapidly changing global phenomenon of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some say it’s the strange or unexpected things that really make events stand out in your mind, but I will never forget the almost eerily normal atmosphere of Senior Week 2021. After a year of hyper-vigilance, unsurety, and isolation, I think we all were too worried about changing plans to really allow ourselves to feel the complex emotions that come along with commencement. For a few magical days in late May, we could just be young adults celebrating our achievements, like so many have done and so many will do.