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Collected Item: “Having a Graduation during a Pandemic”

Give your story a title.

Having a Graduation during a Pandemic

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

Photograph. My mom took it with her camera

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

COVID-19 impacted my senior year from the beginning and certainly still today. In my final year before college, students are given multiple opportunities that because of COVID, I was not able to do. To name some, my March of the Living trip got cancelled, my spring break trip with my friends got cancelled, the rest of my senior year got cancelled and put on Zoom, my graduation was very untraditional, etc.
I attended Miami Country Day School for the last 12 years and I was so excited to get to walk and get my diploma in my own graduation. Unfortunately due to COVID-19, things were extremely different. At first, my school had decided to postpone graduation until December or COVID was not a huge impact to everyone's life. However, everyone fought and it resulted to an untraditional graduation. My school hosted for us a "drive-in" ceremony on the Barry University's campus. The ceremony was outside, everyone was social distanced, and the cars with family were lined up around the ceremony stage allowing my class to celebrate as a community. All families would honk for their friends and families. I say this ceremony was untraditional because everyone was able to decorate their cars with everything associated with their new school for the next 4+ years. I was extremely upset when I found out my graduation was going to be this way but it was by far one of the most special moments in my life. Even though I did not get the same graduation as everyone in the past years, I know that my high school did everything they could to make that moment extremely special because they know all the opportunities that we lost due to COVID-19.

Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?

graduation, high school, goodbyes, postponed, COVID-19, social distance, masks

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

Andrea Bibas

Give this story a date.

2020-05-30
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