MORGANTOWN — Marisa Young didn’t have time for global pandemics on Sunday.
She was too busy graduating … and smiling.
“I’m just so excited,” she said as she waited for a friend outside Milan Puskar Stadium.
Besides, the Bridgeport native and new nursing grad has already seen quite enough of COVID-19 working as an aide in a COVID unit at J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital.
She’ll be staying at Ruby, albeit in a different unit, post graduation.
“Today’s been a long time coming. I didn’t know if we’d be able to come together like this, but it’s amazing to be here. I’m just very, very happy,” Young said.
Sunday capped a weekend of graduations for some 4,499 WVU graduates — the first to collect diplomas in person since December of 2019.
The College of Education and Human Services and the John Chambers College of Business and Economics led things off, followed in the afternoon by the College of Law and the schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy and public health.
Dr. Patrice Harris, a native of Bluefied, three-time WVU alumna and the first African American woman to head the American Medical Association’s Board of Trustees, offered keynote remarks at all four of the weekend’s ceremonies.
She said we’ve all recently learned a lot about perseverance, explaining that a year of losses is not the same as a year lost.
“Appreciate the journey — the whole journey — and that includes embracing the yuck,” Harris said. “If ever there was a yuck time in history, this is it. In a crisis, the yuck, we learn what is most important in life, our families, our friends, the ways we choose to respond to adversity. We also learn about ourselves and test the limits of what we thought possible.”
For Aaron Hunt, part of his yuck was missing out on a graduation ceremony as a member of the Class of 2020.
The health informatics and information management grad came back Sunday to remedy that.
“They didn’t let us walk last year. We didn’t get to have a live ceremony, so I wanted to come back,” Hunt said, explaining that he’s currently back to work as a graduate student. “I think it’s awesome we’re able to come back and do this. I didn’t really get to have a graduation in high school because of the state track meet, so this is actually my first real graduation.”
Drawing inspiration from the big screen — after catching a glimpse of himself on the stadium’s big screen — Javier Reyes, dean of the John Chambers College of Business and Economics, said it’s time for the new grads to venture forth and make their mark.
And that work can begin here in West Virginia, somewhere else on the globe or maybe even in a galaxy far, far away.
“Young Jedi, go forward, and may the Force be with all of you,” Reyes said.
