With graduation coming up, we are all celebrating our seniors as they prepare for the long walk across the stage. While it’s all well and good to take your favorite grad out to dinner or enjoy some quality time before they exit these hallowed grounds, there’s something more you can do to make sure your senior is appreciated: Show up for your friend’s graduation.
For some, their family can’t actually get to graduation, or only a few members of their family can celebrate them. For others, their family is a given, but to see their friends’ faces would make their day. Either way, friends deserve to be celebrated by going the extra mile and showing up for their special day. These events only come around once or twice a year, and for those who don’t have friends and family around to support them, it can honestly be a bit disheartening.
If you are graduating as well, perhaps the most supportive thing you can do is give your family a list of all your friends in your graduation ceremony and have them cheer on your pals as they walk as well. It makes everyone feel like they have a bigger support system in the audience. Similarly, you should take the time to attend your friends’ ceremonies, even if it seems long and tedious. It is still worth it to be able to see the look on your friends’ faces when they walk across the stage.
Graduation is an extremely exciting time for most college students, but for others it can be a source of anxiety. Having friendly faces and support in the audience can make the anxiety over jobs, loans and futures wash away, even if just for a moment. Besides, its four hours of your life, which is the same four hours hundreds of seniors are going to be sitting through. If they can do it, you can do it, and it will mean all the more when you meet up with them after the ceremony and celebrate together.
If you genuinely don’t think you’ll be able to attend graduation, at least attempt to celebrate your seniors in another way. Whether that be gifts, quality time or even food, take the time to recognize what will mean the most to them, and make sure you give them a lasting memory before they leave Baylor. We all want to be recognized for our accomplishments, and graduating from college is one of the biggest accomplishments you can have. So make it worthwhile for the seniors – those who are alone, those who are celebrating and those who are anxious and unsettled by showing up and loving on them, even just for a little while. You never know when you’ll get to see them again, so make your time with them count.
