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In 2020, high school senior Gabriela Moncivais briefly stepped out of her car sporting a “Class of 2020” customized face mask. She grabbed her diploma from her principal and then celebrated her graduation in her car’s passenger seat.

“It was a little anticlimactic for what you worked so hard for 12 years of school and education,” Moncivais said.

Many Class of 2024 graduates have never had a “normal” graduation. The COVID-19 pandemic forced their high school graduation in 2020 to be different, ranging from online ceremonies to car parades. Now, as Syracuse University prepares for the Class of 2024’s graduation, it will be many student’s first time having an in-person ceremony.

Senior Clara Neville is the youngest of three siblings and watched them graduate from the same high school she attended. She had expectations for her last year of high school, but many of them were squashed.

“(Graduation) was something that I was really looking forward to, and it was super strange for mine to be so different,” Neville said.

Neville, however, feels lucky to have had a car parade graduation like Moncivais. Sophia Darsch had both virtual and car ceremonies. Before her actual graduation, Darsch went into school wearing her cap and gown and walked across the stage. Videos of the senior class walking one by one were later compiled into a YouTube livestream.

“I remember watching it, and my family was very excited, but I just felt sad about it because I felt like I didn’t get a chance to say bye to people or really celebrate my time in high school or K through 12,” Darsch said.

Giana DiTolla and most of her family live in Southern California, where she’s from. They would come together for her cousins’ and siblings’ graduation to cheer them on.

She had talked about having a graduation party with her two other cousins at their grandpa’s house, which never happened. However, her older cousins and her sister had that same party they hoped for three years prior. She appreciated the ceremonies she had but thought about the family celebration she missed.

“They were doing the best with what they had, but I’m still disappointed and still mourning that ceremony where I get to walk up on stage and my family gets to see me,” DiTolla said.

Having these different sorts of graduations led the Class of 2020 to feel like their grade school education was “incomplete,” Moncivais said. Many other people don’t realize what the graduates missed out on. Moncivais is sad to have missed graduation, prom and her school’s all-night party.

“I hear stories all of the time, people are like, ‘Oh, I skipped my college graduation. Like it wasn’t that big of a deal for me,’” DiTolla said. “I was like, ‘The last time I walked across the stage was probably kindergarten.’ So like, I gotta do this, and I really want it to be nice and I want it to be special.”

Unlike other graduates, Han Zhang had an in-person ceremony. As a Chinese international student, the country had a lower risk of COVID-19 outbreaks, which allowed her class to walk the stage.

However, the major difference at her ceremony was that there were about 40 people in her class without their families. Zhang still had fun, though, because she could take photos with the people she became close with. She was also used to her family not being there because she had gone to a boarding school.

“I think it surprised many people that we had an in-person graduation,” Zhang said. “We were still happy.”

Zhang also never stepped foot onto SU’s campus until her sophomore year, which was the first time she’d ever been to the United States. Looking back on their college years, many graduates realize how much they missed out on.

The Class of 2024’s freshman year hosted mostly online classes, as they couldn’t gather in groups of more than four. DiTolla recalled how much “Zoom Fatigue” she felt. Club fairs were hosted on Zoom, which led to her not getting as involved as she would have initially liked. Similarly, Moncivais was surprised when the Shaw Quadrangle’s three tents got taken down for the first time and still remembers the moment she took off her mask to sing in her musical theater classes.

Because of these restrictions, Darsch feels like she had three years of college rather than four.

“I was able to do a bunch of things that I had thought college would be,” Neville said. “But then, when something like graduation comes around, we’re reminded of what we missed out on.”

As the SU’s Class of 2024 prepares to graduate this weekend, many have no clue what will happen.

Neville said that if they had had a high school graduation, they would know what to expect. The class is going in blindly and doesn’t know when it’ll feel real, she said.

Darsch said this graduation is the closure of her entire academic career, and it’s the first time she knows for certain she will cross the stage. She is excited to celebrate with the rest of the SU graduates who also missed out on their high school graduation.

“It’s now been 16 years of education,” Moncivais said. “This graduation makes up for the one that I didn’t have, so in a way, it’s not only a celebration of my achievements in college but of my achievements in high school as well.”

Published on May 8, 2024 at 9:44 pm

Contact Rosina: rlboehm@syr.edu