Jimena Cristerna planned to become the first in her family to graduate from college, but after a year of online classes, she took a break to become a swim teacher and coach, where she says she found her true passion. Front Porch photo by Christie Gosch

On a chilly, overcast day in May, more than 30,000 people filled Folsom Field to celebrate commencement at the University of Colorado Boulder. Amid the graduates were friends and family of Marc Witter, who grew up in Park Hill and had a very different kind of graduation four years ago from East High School.

He, and so many others like him, were deprived of a normal graduation ceremony because of the Covid pandemic. At East, graduates had a “drive-by” celebration to receive diplomas, but many other traditional senior activities were canceled. “I was in the middle of looking for a suit for prom. I had a senior trip all planned. And none of it happened,” says Witter.

Marc Witter graduated from the Univ. of Colorado Boulder in May.

Like many students, Witter spent the spring and summer of 2020 isolated with his family, so in the fall he was eager to move into a dorm at CU. Even with pandemic restrictions, “college was still going to mean more freedom than living at home.”

He had a few in-person classes, but most were virtual, including one lecture class that had 600 people on Zoom. “That was not the best learning environment,” he concedes. Despite those challenges, Witter graduated with a degree in environmental sciences and hopes to find work with an environmental consulting firm.

Four years ago, Lydia Loof graduated from George Washington High School via a video ceremony that featured pre-recorded speeches from students and teachers. Like Witter, she was relieved to leave for college after a summer of isolation. “I was excited to meet new people,” says Loof. But doing so was challenging at Amherst College in Massachusetts because of pandemic rules.

Lydia Loof graduated from Amherst with a biology degree.

“I think for a lot of freshmen, eating in the dining hall is how you make friends, but we weren’t allowed to do that. We had to schedule a time to pick up our food and then eat elsewhere.” Still, she considers herself lucky. “I do think I was able to make really close friends my freshman year because there wasn’t a whole lot for us to do, so that was a silver lining for me,” says Loof, who graduated in late May with a biology degree and will work for a Colorado non-profit doing environmental work this summer.

Ivan Tochimani-Hernandez’s DSST Montview graduation ceremony took place at a drive-in movie theater where graduates sat in cars with their families and watched pre-recorded videos. As a self-described “first generation, low-income person of color,” he experienced “a huge culture shock” when he arrived at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

Ivan Tochimani-Hernandez plans to graduate from Dartmouth in June.

He was also confronted with extremely strict Covid rules. “We talk about how we’re the ‘lost’ Dartmouth class. It was really difficult for us to connect as a class,” says Tochimani-Hernandez. All lectures were on Zoom and students were not allowed to congregate. “We were heavily policed. I was once walking with my friends outside and security came up to us and said ‘what are you doing out here?’ It was incredibly frustrating not to be able to step outside to get some fresh air.”

He says the stress of Covid and the restrictions took a terrible toll on students. “We all felt isolated. People weren’t sleeping because of the paranoia that security officers might accuse you of breaking a Covid policy and then send you back home,” says Tochimani-Hernandez. “We had three suicides in my class our freshman year. That was incredibly damaging for our class. It’s not something that you can ever really recover from.”

Tochimani-Hernandez says things were better his sophomore year when he participated in a 10-week program studying geology in different regions from Canada to Arizona and his junior year when he studied in the Czech Republic. He will graduate from Dartmouth in early June with a degree in earth sciences and plans to attend the University of Utah in the fall for a master’s degree.

Jimena Cristerna was also on-track to be the first in her family to graduate from college, when Covid shut down senior year activities at George Washington. In the fall of 2020, she attended Metropolitan State University of Denver, where she had been offered a full-ride scholarship. But she says it was very difficult. “I struggled learning online at Metro. At GW, I mostly got straight A’s, but at Metro, I was getting C’s and D’s. And then my grandparents in Mexico died and I decided to take a break from college.”

She helped care for her disabled sister, took on some odd jobs, and then found her calling teaching and coaching swimming. She’s an assistant coach for the Swim Dogs swimming club and helps coach the George Washington swim team. Looking back on her journey over the past four years, she says, “I respect higher education and what it’s done for people but I needed to navigate a different path. I think Covid made me more true to myself.” Cristerna says she feels very fulfilled working with children and helping them fuel a passion. “I felt like I was kind of pushed into a box in high school and then going to college was another box. Now I’m existing outside the box.”

All of the students who spoke to Front Porch said they were glad to have the pandemic years behind them, even as some of its impacts linger. “I think the lack of closure with my high school years has made me more aware of taking advantage of every moment of life because you just don’t know if something is going to happen and change everything,” says Witter.