Editorial: How to prepare for virtual commencement

Pitt announced Wednesday that spring commencement would be moved online, so that “graduating seniors could get recognition for their hard work.”

You might not be walking down the aisles of the Pete, or taking photos with your friends, but not to worry. There’s still plenty of celebratory preparation to be done. Here’s what you need to do to ensure you’re ready to graduate on April 26. 

First, make sure to support local businesses by calling ahead and ordering a cake from your local bakery with the Zoom logo on it. Underneath, make sure it says in icing cursive: 

Gallagher, Chancellor Patrick is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: The ceremony you tirelessly worked toward all night in Hillman for, for four years! 

Time: Apr 26, 2020 11:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

In order to keep “Zoombombers” out, The Pitt News Editorial Board recommends not including the link to your virtual meeting on this celebratory cake. 

Find your cap and gown from high school, because yes, we all know you still have it. If you don’t know where it is, you’re either lying, or it’s in the back of your mom’s coat closet downstairs. 

Now, get dressed for commencement and admire the inspirational saying you glued to your cap back around 2016. You sure were “onto the next chapter” when you graduated high school. You just didn’t realize that your chapter was going to end sitting on your parents’ living room couch, did you?

Make sure to take a few photos prior, posed next to a small ceramic animal figurine that you can pretend is a panther one day. Or, find a construction site in your neighborhood and stand in front of that. Nobody will ever realize that this was not taken on Pitt’s campus.

Once commencement begins, sing the alma mater acapella and watch a tear spill from the cheek of your mother. She is probably crying because she just wants you — for the love of God — to stop singing. But, you never know. And what you don’t know probably won’t kill you. 

Make sure your parents and siblings clap for you when the speakers talk about how hard the student body has worked over the past four years. Support your local air horn store and have your family use that, too.

The best part of all of this might be the fact that you can drink during commencement. And while you might’ve been planning to drink discreetly during commencement, now you can drink openly during commencement. Pop open a bottle of champagne while Gallagher is giving his speech and get drunk with your parents.

But in all seriousness, make a toast to yourself — the hard work you’ve done, that crappy South Oakland apartment you lived in which was slanted at a 15-degree angle, the gen eds you hardly passed.

From snow days to pipe bursts to the destruction of the Forbes Avenue 7-Eleven to a pandemic, you’ve seen it all in your time at Zoom University — we mean it, Pitt. Once the governor legally allows you to leave your parents’ house, you’re ready to take on the world.