Embracing In-Person Commencement as an Alum
Congratulations to all graduates and families!
Commencement 2022 is just around the corner. This year is an especially interesting Commencement year in Harvard’s history – after all, it probably isn’t very often that you have three graduating class years’ graduation ceremonies during the same week. Not only will Cambridge, MA celebrate the newest class of Harvard alumni-to-be, but also welcome back recent graduates for our Commencement.
Although I was grateful that Harvard was able to do virtual Commencement events for my class year (2021) and the preceding class, part of me always felt that something was missing from the virtual ceremony. Perhaps it’s the hugs of (a temporary) goodbye with my professors, mentors, and friends to mark the end of an era. Perhaps it’s the presence of my family with me as I walk across the stage with as an official Juris Doctor – for us international students, this traditional aspect of a graduation ceremony is very challenging to achieve. And perhaps, it’s the feeling of celebrating with friends and classmates, with whom you have shared classes, extracurricular activities, and everything else, next to you – in-person.
Shortly after my virtual graduation, I’ve been delighted to join the Harvard Law School Association’s Recent Graduates Network as the youngest current board member. Although we have planned a number of events for recent graduates, I sometimes find it difficult to truly engage young alumni as closely as I would hope. Geography is a big part – after all, people are spread out across different U.S. states and internationally, and are constantly keeping busy with work and other commitments. From my perspective, I also feel that there could have been a lack of the sense of true closure for the Class of 2020 and 2021. Because of the pandemic, our in-person time was cut short by almost half of our J.D. journey, and despite the relatively seamless transition to the virtual learning environment, I missed “real” law school terribly.
My last in-person HLS class was a negotiations workshop session. I had no idea at the time that it would be my last close-to-normal class, perhaps ever, since I don’t currently have further graduate school plans. While I appreciated my negotiation workshop working group’s close-knit nature and continued support to each other, I still felt that the last “real” class ended anticlimactically. And so did my last law school class via Zoom, for which I actually had to log off one minute early and barely got to say goodbye to everyone. Sure, the real world is full of anticlimactic-ness and unexpected turn of events, but I still hoped to say a proper farewell to student life.
So is it weird to say bye to student life as an alumna at Commencement? Maybe. Commencements are usually full of inspiring speeches about the exciting intellectual and professional journeys ahead, marked by phenomenal speakers. Commencements tend to treat graduation as a milestone in one’s life, where you exit academic life as a student to embrace the real world outside the bubble or ivory tower. Sure, I can easily imagine counterarguments that graduation is just another day in one’s life, especially for people like me who have already graduated. What’s the point? We graduated already. Asked quite a few friends from Harvard who do not plan to attend the in-person ceremony despite being geographically close to campus. Maybe it’s my nostalgia, or my desire to reunite with many peers and professors all in a place that’s dear to us before our first alumni reunion event.
For the Harvard Class of 2021 and 2020, Commencement 2022 will be especially interesting and perhaps refreshing. We have already stepped outside the ivory tower and academic bubble to work in the real world. We now have our own experience in our individual professions. We will be celebrating this important academic and professional milestone one year (or two years for the preceding class year) after we stepped past this milestone officially. It will be a different experience to listen to the graduation prep-talks. Maybe the real graduation day is just another arbitrary day, but it will be a day where the Harvard community comes together again to celebrate each other, and learn from each other.
I look forward to seeing everyone at our cherished crimson campus (where I haven’t visited since the early-stage COVID-19 pandemic), whether we are friends who are still very much in touch regularly, or were mere acquaintances who remember each other’s faces from the hallway hellos. It’s a perfect opportunity to reconnect.
Congratulations to all graduates!
