The graduates sit shoulder to shoulder, waiting their turn to ascend the stage. Their families sit behind them, clapping and cheering as students’ names are called.

Most of the speeches include a standard acknowledgement that the students “made it,” though this year that means something extra.

When the ceremonies are over, students and their families mingle outside of the venue for photos and congratulatory embraces. No one must be reminded to keep their distance. Nearly everyone is unmasked.

As recently as two weeks ago, students were still required to wear face masks at school. And before May, it wasn’t clear that these traditional ceremonies would be possible.

The class of 2021 spent its final years of high school in limbo. But for the students who spoke to the Star-Tribune, the COVID-19 pandemic is in the rearview mirror. They’re just excited to start their lives.

***

“It doesn’t feel real,” Roosevelt High School graduate Patience Gates says, holding a bouquet and a diploma.

She spent her last semester of high school as a virtual student and “just kind of missed the human interaction.”

The in-person ceremony was particularly important to her because she’ll be the first person in her family to attend college, and she felt this was an important milestone. She explains this as her family looks on, waiting for her to rejoin their celebration.

Last year’s graduates were more limited. The pandemic was still relatively new at this time in 2020. Vaccines were still a distant thought, and state and local health officials couldn’t justify traditional graduation ceremonies given the risk.

The district’s high schools modified the milestone for 2020’s graduating class. Instead, they held outdoor and “drive-in” ceremonies where social distancing was enforced and spectators were limited.

Gates’ classmate Ivy Ross, who also graduated a year early, says she felt “accomplished” after the last year and a half of chaos. Ross, too, is holding a bouquet and accepting eager embraces from her friends.

“Now we get to go out and live our lives,” she says, referencing both the apparent tail end of the pandemic and the conclusion of her high school obligations.

***

When the district abruptly transitioned to remote learning to conclude the 2019-20 school year, Ross worried she might not get to finish high school in a physical building.

Much of the nation kept K-12 classes remote through this school year, but nearly all of Wyoming’s schools were in person again by September.

“I’m just thankful I got some of the senior stuff,” explains Kassidy Brooks, a Natrona County High School and Pathways Innovation Center student.

Brooks radiates positivity. When she catches herself saying something negative about how the pandemic affected her senior year, she quickly throws in a comment that she’s thankful for what she was able to do. The social elements of high school were Brooks’ favorite: assemblies, football games, time spent with her FFA team.

There may have been more restrictions around these events this year, “but I’m just glad we got some of the ‘quote unquote’ normal things,” she says. When the district shifted to online-only school at the end of last year, she worried she wouldn’t have any of those “normal” experiences.

The first few months were OK, she says. She didn’t have to wear a mask while doing virtual school, and she didn’t feel that limited because everything was closed anyway. But over the summer, she decided to find a job to start saving for college.

She started working long shifts at Crumbl Cookies. Employees were required to wear masks constantly, which she says was understandable because they were serving food. But eventually it began to weigh on her.

“I was working one of the night shifts and I’ve had a mask on all day. My ears were hurting, I had a hat on, so my head was hurting. I was breathing in and out of a mask all day and I didn’t get a break to go outside to take it off,” she remembers. “I went into the back and started, like, bawling.”

“So that was really the hardest day because, like, everything kind of came on me at once,” Brooks says. “Sometimes people get scared when they don’t know what’s going to happen next, and I didn’t know. So I definitely got a little scared and I definitely broke down a little.”

But after a long conversation with her dad, from whom she says she gets her optimism, she realized the situation was out of her control. The realization made returning to a mask mandate at school easier as well.

But Brooks isn’t really thinking about COVID-19 anymore. She’s focused on her full-ride scholarship to Casper College. She doesn’t know exactly what she’ll end up doing.

“I have a lot of different ideas,” she says. “I wanted to be an (agriculture) teacher. I wanted to go into reproductive science to get a PhD. I wanted to actually go into the more human side and be like a labor and delivery nurse. I have a lot of ideas.”

***

Brooks’ classmate Andrew Alexander, a Pathways student and Kelly Walsh High School graduate, says something similar.

“I just wanted to have the most seamless transition through my senior year because, you know, school helped me, yeah. But I want to move on to bigger and greater things in life,” he says.

Alexander will study criminal justice next year at Casper College. He wants to eventually return to the Natrona County School District as a school resource officer.

“I want to work with, you know, the kids who are having a really bad day or they just need somebody to open up to and it’s like, you know, I want to offer that as an opportunity,” he says.

Those are the kinds of connections he missed the most while doing virtual school last year. When he returned to in-person learning, he was frustrated with having to wear a mask and distance from friends, but he was glad to at least be in the building. He describes himself as a hands-on person who enjoys tutoring his classmates.

Alexander did not attend his graduation ceremony Friday. It wasn’t a milestone he needed to participate in, he says.

“I’m not into the dog and pony shows of stuff,” he said. “I want to personally know that I graduated for me to move on. ... I’m looking forward to working, having fun with my work, being able to do stuff.”