Generations before COVID-19 cast its long shadow over American life, graduation had been a big, big deal.
The coronavirus may have changed the way we celebrate achievements and accomplishments, but it hasn’t changed people’s spirits.
Around the country — but especially in Massachusetts, a veritable cornucopia of colleges — the celebratory atmosphere reaches a fever pitch right around Memorial Day weekend.
I recently saw how Lynnfield pulled together a COVID-compliant graduation event in lieu of a formal — and crowded — indoor celebration. The town opted to laud its high-school seniors by throwing a “parade of destinations” down the main streets in town, with graduates encouraged to rep their new schools in their respective clothing and the decoration of their cars and bikes.
It was a clever way to get the students, who definitely haven’t seen much of each other in the past few months, to learn where their friends and classmates would be headed in the fall without getting them all within infecting distance.
After all, one of the most exciting moments of “Senior Week” is that breathless reveal of where we’re off to next.
It makes me remember my own senior year; starting as early as December and January, when the early-decision applicants started hearing back from their dream schools. Kids would come in wearing their new college duds, their futures emblazoned on their chests.
If the youngest sibling in a family of Penn State grads suddenly started wearing a Penn State jersey, that was major. If you and your high-school sweetheart both started wearing UMass hats around decision time, that was pretty big, too. These moments were manifestations of hopes and wishes.
Dad gives you his old UCLA basketball shirt and you know what you have to live up to. You know what’s calling you. You’re a senior in high school, and you don’t know much, but you know you can at least wear the mantle of the place you’re going next — that place where you see yourself becoming something definite in an indefinite world.
That’s the whole idea behind college logos, colors and iconography, their merchandise stores on campus and online. They want you to feel like you’re wearing your future.
When I was 18, I had the somewhat distasteful experience of watching it all unfold from a distance. Of a graduating class of about 350 people, only three of us were not going anywhere in the fall. I was one of the three. Whatever, y’know? Senior year was tough, and I just couldn’t get it going in time. I made it to college eventually, but I’m not going to deny that it was hard watching my classmates radiate pride in their stately crimsons, navys and forest greens.
One of the graduation festivities at my school was a harbor dinner cruise for the senior class. It was a nice, sweet send-off, and I was all ready to go except tradition held that, for this event, we were obliged to wear apparel from the schools we’d been accepted to.
I was good at hiding my ambivalence to people’s college swag during the school day, but something about the thought of being stuck with the squealing, manic energy, the who’s-going-where of it all, for hours on end surrounded by water with no escape — I’ll admit it. It pissed me off.
A few nights before the cruise, my best friend (besides me, one of three unlucky seniors who hadn’t committed to a school in time) sat with me as I furiously ironed letter patches onto a T-shirt. At that point I was still planning on getting on the boat, but I had a little revenge scheme in my pocket. The patches I was ironing were to spell out “F— U.”
Funny, right? U, like university? I was such a twerp.
“Are you really going to do it?” she asked.
I said “yes,” and she rolled her eyes. She didn’t want anything to do with the stupid cruise because, according to her, it would have been a lame time. Her aversion had nothing to do with who was headed where.
I stopped my ironing. As soon as she called me out, I realized I was never going to do what I had planned. I was never going to get on the boat and exit Boston Harbor for the North Atlantic explaining over and over that no, I didn’t get in anywhere, yeah no it happens I guess, uh-huh and that’s what the shirt is about, yeah no it’s fine.
Of course I wasn’t going to do that. I was going to hang out with my best friend.
One thing I’ve learned in my peculiar experience is that, while it hurts to be one of the few left behind in the festivities, I was in no way alone. Three out of 350 ain’t much, but we weren’t nothing.
Today, I imagine that there must be hundreds of thousands like me, who, because of COVID and one thing leading to another, could not join their friends in donning their college mantles.
If that’s your situation, then you’ll probably feel how I felt. Hopefully I can tell you something now that I didn’t figure out until much later.
You may go on to higher education, or you might not; it’s not a decision that’s going to define who you are. A school simply can’t do that. At the end of the day, a college jersey is just a shirt.
And that’s why I want to welcome all non-college-bound seniors to the 2021 Class of F— U. You are going to do great things, and I couldn’t be prouder.
