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Graduation Season

There’s a new (at least I think it’s new) phenomenon happening on college campuses at graduation time all over the country: staged photo shoots of graduates scheduled days in advance of the actual ceremony. Young women organize the photo events around campus, tending to every last detail from the color of their dresses (white or cream), hair and makeup, to the iconic locations throughout the particular school.

On the positive side, students will be sure to have beautiful memories of their friends, how they looked and their favorite places on campus. That’s incredible, to be able to look back on stunning smiling faces, joyous and thrilled to have journeyed successfully to this point. The young women achieved so much: finding their path, living independently, making new and lifelong friends, and growing up. It’s truly a defining moment in their lives. 

I hope when our young students look back at these staged photos, they also remember the nights studying, the hours in class connecting with a professor, the shared moments late at night or early in the morning when there was nothing but school and friends and growing up to do.

When I graduated from college it was a rainy, balmy day in May. My friends and I got our diplomas on the football field and posed glowingly for photos for our parents. We were so innocent and happy. Soggy and damp, but smiling from ear to ear. No one thought to stage a photo, we were just lucky to be there together,
at that moment. 

The photo shoot is surely a byproduct of our lifeline to our phones, social media, and the constant need to post details about every detail of our lives. The staged and choreographed events were inevitable: the pressure to post, reveal and display is unavoidable. Or at least it seems to be. 

There’s no turning back now, or at least I don’t see a path back. The important part of this is that the young faces in the photos have all made connections that will last a lifetime, photo shoot or not.


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