How to Graduate In Absentia: From Basic to Extra
Nicolette Petra
As I write this, I am sitting at my desk with my brother’s Year 12 mortarboard atop my head, trying to make the most of what would have been my graduation day.
While graduations are by no means a high-level priority for the world amidst a global pandemic, they’ve been a noticeable focal point, taking up significant airtime in the news and across social media, from memes to the average Karen’s throwback post of her own graduation circa 1992 captioned with her sympathies that we won’t be able to experience the same (thanks, Karen, much appreciated). In the US, CNN even filmed a Class of 2020: In This Together program hosted by Lebron James, in which a slew of celebrities including former President Barack Obama appeared to congratulate the graduates.
Back home in Australia, the latest place all this graduation chatter had taken up residence was my Instagram feed, which on Thursday night, was clogged with photos from my Media and Communications (MeCo) cohort. Posts ranged from pics of my peers all dressed up and holding their freshly-printed DIY-framed certificates in various poses in their backyard, to a mere 15 second insta story with a sarcastic ‘thanks’ to the university for the enormous effort it must have taken to email us our PDF-degrees.
Sure, there are upsides to not having an on-campus graduation. There was no stressful hiring of caps and gowns. No tedious waiting in line to enter the Great Hall. No having to pick and choose which two lucky family members get to watch your ceremony. No potential wind or rain to ruin your hair and photos.
Yet, here we are, with four years of tertiary education behind us, becoming Bachelors from our bedrooms with no way of celebrating the milestone in the way we hoped or envisioned. No mortarboard toss. No bouquets of flowers or grad bears or ‘Congratulations!’ No eye-rolls at your parents for the fifth photoshoot in a different location of the quad as your friends wait patiently behind them having visited in between classes for a quick snap with you.
As Maggie Mosbarger (a recent US graduate with a BA in Sociology who featured on New York freelance photographer Jeremy Cohen’s Instagram) put it, “It’s super bittersweet to be achieving a life accomplishment with no one here to witness.”
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Bittersweet though it may be, Maggie sought to make the most of her graduation, wearing a red grad gown and opening a bottle of champers on her NYC apartment rooftop and taking a couple of pics with the cardboard cutout of her parents which they’d sent her.
Like Maggie and my fellow MeCo peers, I wasn’t about to allow my graduation, in absentia or otherwise, go unacknowledged. So here are a couple of ideas ranging from minimal effort to Kardashian-level extra all you graduates in absentia can do at home, because when life gives you lemons, make lemonade; when life takes away your graduation, hold your own ceremony and clap your damn self.
Basic: Open your email and download the most expensive PDF you’ll ever own. See your name appear. Yell at your parents from your bedroom that you’ve graduated (wait for the “What?!” and repeat until they give up and yell “Okay!”). Pat yourself on the back and continue studying for finals or procrastinating with Netflix. You’ve earned it.
Aw, that’s cute: Find a black mortarboard, hat or cap (anything from a beret to your sister’s train conductor hat from Glassons will do) and a black coat, jacket or (if you’re a Harry Potter nerd like yours truly) a Hogwarts robe. Wear your makeshift graduation attire while you go about your day, because you deserve to flaunt through your kitchen like all those grads do through Courtyard.
Spicy: Research what colour your stole (sash) would be and find something around the house close to that. For Arts, it’s fur, so I made the most of a detachable faux-fur lining from a grey coat.
Extra: Really dress up. I mean the full nine yards - hair, makeup, that dress or suit you had planned - go all out. Treat yo self.
Extra with a side of fries: Organise a video call with friends and extended family. Play out the entire ceremony, complete with an opening address from your celebrity of choice via YouTube. Have a photoshoot. Let’s face it, that’s the reason you came to uni in the first place. You’re doing amazing, sweetie!
Too much time on your hands: Photoshop yourself into a picture of the quad. Post on Insta. Frame it beside a print-out of your degree. Pour yourself a glass of bubbles (or water if you have to continue studying for upcoming finals). Turn up the beats and celebrate like you would were still going to Europe to find yourself (again) this July before entering the rat race. You go, Glen Coco.
As we wait for the hard-copy versions of our degrees to be mailed out to us amongst the other COVID-delayed packages, I hope that though the Class of 2020 has had their graduation ceremonies suspended for now, the university will grant us the opportunity to do it right once a sense of consistent normalcy ensues and it’s possible for mass gatherings to be held, be that next semester or next year.
For some, graduating from tertiary education is the mark of a life achievement. For those studying a double degree, it’s a touchstone in their continuing university career. For every graduate, it’s a milestone. Giving us a graduation ceremony in the future is a way of celebrating what has quite literally been years worth of lectures, tutorials, labs, learning, study, essay writing, group work, commutes, friendships forged through struggling together, and personal growth. It’s the closing of a chapter of what has been a number of formative years in our lives and the beginning of another equally exciting and daunting one.
A ceremony also gives our friends and family who supported us getting into and through uni a chance to congratulate us (and themselves given all the rants they’ve had to endure from us). It’s also the least the university can do, given the hefty HECS debt we’re shouldering while also looking down the barrel of the current near-barren job market.
So, yes, USyd. I want that 30 seconds where I walk across a stage, shake some notable intellectual or B-range celebrity’s hand, flip my tassel from one side of my cap to the other, walk off with my degree, watch my friends do the same and take photos outside a vine-riddled, sandstone building with my family and friends. Don’t forget it. For now though, a selfie in my living room will do.
Congratulations to the Class of 2020. May your job prospects become brighter than they currently stand, may your future employers be understanding, and may you soon find yourself standing on the stage of the Great Hall receiving the graduation ceremony you deserve.