To the Class of 2020,
Activities and Societies: Honors in English, Chi Alpha Epsilon National Honor Society, Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, Multicultural Scholar, TRIO Scholar, KU Theatre participant, Spencer Museum of Art Jack and Lavon Brosseau Creativity Award for Writing, William Herbert Carruth Memorial Award (1st Place), and original poetry and photography published in Kiosk Magazine
Graduation: A moment of reflection and celebration of academic success. But what do we consider “academic success”? Is success graduating with Honors? A “three-point-whatever” or higher (meaning mostly A’s) GPA? President’s and Dean’s lists? Societies and organizations? Graduating in May 2020, during a global pandemic, makes my university success story feel that much more difficult to pin down.
Now, at the end of August 2020, I am still in disbelief that a life of masks, 6 feet apart (at least), and sanitizing every item used in public is going on 6 months as “the new normal.” 3 months since a commemorative virtual event, I am still processing how to view my life in academia coming to a close. I have used education as escapism for years, and now that another academic year has begun, I find it difficult to accept that it began without me. I also find it difficult to believe that it is possible for a new academic year to begin again at all at a time where the world still seems surreal, nearly frozen—but not quite. We all move a little bit slower. A little more cautious... Instead of feeling like our academic careers are “wrapped up with a bow,” members of the Class of 2020 not returning to classes this Fall are left to try to make sense of a tangled up ending. The tone of the world overshadowed the typical joyful emotions of an academic year ending in May. Roughly 6 months into a global pandemic (and much longer of navigating in a nation out of control), and I can’t seem to gain a semblance of order in my own small world. But I know it will come as it has before—and I think of some of the reasons that helped me push through before…
I went to community college so my future child doesn’t have to. I worked two jobs while being a full-time student some semesters. I now have the empathy some Americans lack to fight for affordable college education for all. I had a college experience of, “All work, no play,” so I dream a college experience for my future child… A college experience with a focus on education and networking and strengthening interpersonal skills instead of having that focus interrupted by pressing month-to-month survival. I dream for my future child… college friendships, internships, and maybe even a trip to study abroad (if I can make that happen.) I dream for my future child… a college experience where daily crying in break rooms does not exist and that my future child will not have to repeatedly wonder if college is even worth sticking with—because it is. It absolutely is, even if your circumstances are less than ideal. I found the strength in tears, and I dreamt a promise to do right by my future child, because America has not done right by several of her children.
For months, in quarantine, I didn’t even feel like a graduate. With a cap and gown hanging in plain sight, unworn, and no ceremony to collectively turn my tassel to another side of one of the most oddly constructed hats in history, there was no closure to my five years of higher education. (Yes, five. Transferring credits is way more difficult than advisors make it sound lol.) At this time, I can only borrow images from movies and family members’ ceremonies. I picture myself in a sea of strangers in matching regalia. As I paint myself into borrowed sceneries, I find myself wondering if I would have known more of these strangers in caps and gowns if I had a parent in my life to lean on for the survival aspects of my early twenties, to allow for more social aspects. But I shake myself out of the borrowed in-person ceremony memory because, “It is what it is,” and “I am what I am.” These things I cannot change. So I dream of my future, of overextending myself at work to provide for a future child, to give that child the college experience I could never have. Even in dreams I know affordability is a hand reaching out that higher education refuses to hold. (But maybe we can help bridge the gap, if we vote, and admit that the racial wealth gap in America is real instead of a hoax.)
I’ve processed and “odd jobbed,” prayed-sulked-meditated for years on how to still make my college experience one I could recall fondly. Though it was not easy—the greatest successes never are—I still found the sweeter moments, and learned through the hard. After a year as a transfer student, I landed an on-campus job the Lord knew I needed, with full-time staff mentors who offered check-ins and encouragement most students find in parents. I appreciated instructors who checked in with us as people with schedules instead of robotic students, knowing some of us clocked out at 1:30am and finished papers at 4:30am, just to show up to campus for work at 9:00am in a never-ending revolving door frenzy. I hid my personality in semesters where it was hard to find the light, but I also laughed too loud and teased and sang with classmates when I realized connecting (even when broken) makes it easier to survive. On Zoom, I choked and teared up—realizing the freest I ever allowed myself to feel, my Senior year, (in-person) was cut short.
A semester of COVID-19 was my final test, one I feel like I still haven’t passed. I’ve felt unmotivated, overwhelmed, and alone. Activities which brought me the most joy now come in last, and the free person I worked to become my Senior year was somewhat lost in isolation. Something as simple as a graduation photoshoot was continuously delayed. Also, 2020 this was one of the rainiest summers in Kansas I’ve seen in a while! (At least, it felt like it, popping up on days I planned to document my “I-guess-it-kind-of-sort-of-did-happen-right?” graduation.) Even so, as difficult as a moment in my personal and in American history this current moment is, I must remind myself that college (and life) isn’t all about the struggle. It’s finding the growth among the struggle. This continuous self and collective growth is what helps us continue to walk through adversity.
Now, 3 months after technically being a graduate (albeit still stepping into actually feeling like one), I worry for my friends’ and mentors’ health and safety as they return to campus this Fall. I still feel out of control of my own future, graduating into a moment of so many uncertainties. I’ve struggled to find balance between keeping informed, educated, and active in the Black Lives Matter Movement and other components of America’s current political climate and taking time to deliberately recharge, meditate, and take care of my own health and find internal peace in times of chaos. Walking KU campus as an alumna during the pandemic feels familiar, yet distant—and I wonder if the same feeling of simultaneously belonging and not belonging would exist if times weren’t so strange. To be a graduate without a ceremony, to have one foot in but one foot out is an interesting place to be. But I remind myself, as a transfer student whose lifestyle did not allow the commonly thought of college experiences, it isn’t that different than before—the feeling of being outside of a commonly shared experience. Regardless, I know my time as a student, in the formal world of academia, has come to a close. Although that is a difficult reality to accept, and the closing came at such a strange time, I remind myself that we never stop learning—and to not let good contacts get away from us (even at a time where we are told to be distant.) I remind myself, the Class of 2020 didn’t graduate into the world like normal because we were meant to focus our energy on creating a new kind of world we would want to graduate into.
The Class of 2020 didn’t graduate into the world like normal because we were meant to focus our energy on creating a new kind of world we would WANT to graduate into.
I’m not going to feel like a typical graduate. These are not typical times. None of us are sure when a vaccine will be discovered. But, in the meantime, I will acknowledge the present moment as it is instead of as I had hoped, reach out to others and share experiences and ways to continue self and collective growth, make the most of working on what I can change and pray for what I cannot, remind myself that I made the most I possibly could of the educational experience that I was allowed, and engage with and create work that (like Black lives) matters. By doing this, I feel the most whole that I can in a time that shattered so much. By doing this, I work towards improving the self and the collective daily. By doing this, I feel like a graduate. A $[xx],000 diploma may get lost some day. There will come a time I forget my GPA. My cap and gown may go misplaced. The memories in boxes in backs of closets may fade—to go where lost things go. But I won’t forget the people and places that helped me and—hopefully, in return—I helped grow.
My university success story wasn’t graduating with Honors, a “three-point-whatever” or higher (meaning mostly A’s) GPA, President’s and Dean’s lists, societies and organizations, and whatever else looks good on a resume. My university success story is living on my own since 18 years old without parents. My university success story is barely making ends meet and still making A’s. My university success story is being a Mixed Black woman in Middle America, leaving behind a town that made me feel small and tried to silence me, followed by stepping out into a more progressive community to step into the person I was meant to be. My university success story is teetering between confidence and insecurity in terms of a writing-art-graphic design-photography-singing-acting-fashion creative storm on the daily but doing the damn thing anyway. My university success story is the push and pull of depression-anxiety-depression-anxiety. My university success story is all of those things and more. Life is going to get messy, and navigating systems of oppression makes it that much harder. But what a beautiful thing it is to say, with a heart full of gratitude and a spirit which only made it through because of the encouragement from mentors, friends, and the family members I am blessed to still have with me:
“I made it.”
Photos by Andrew Hughes