Higher education isn’t just about finding the career path a person wants to choose, it’s the transition of living on one’s own for the first time, finding where one belongs, and understanding the person someone wants to become.

Between assignments and making time for a social life, the standard four years of a college student’s life seems to fly by in the blink of an eye. It’s a much different pace than what high school took and can go for however long a student wants to attend.

Graduation is a bittersweet feeling for many college senior’s life. It is an anticipated time for many college students but many feel overwhelmed when it comes time to leave the place they have made a home for the last four years or so.

Sydney Moyers is graduating at the end of this semester and has many feelings on the subject. She will be leaving West Liberty University this fall with a bachelors in speech pathology. There are a little less than twenty days left until graduation and like many the excitement of starting a life outside of her college career is starting to show.

Moyers has worked hard to be in the place she is like many other seniors in her shoes preparing to walk on the stage at graduation, but it’s a little different now in a global pandemic. She explained that it is a bit heartbreaking that she can’t actually get to graduate in person beside her friends with the support of her family and friends in the audience, but she is overwhelmingly excited to start working and saving up for graduate school in the very near future.

Taylor Whitted is graduating also at the end of the fall semester from West Liberty with a degree in graphic design. Whitted has been working very hard towards the end of her college years this last semester and has a little bit of a different opinion when it comes to virtual Graduation. Whitted’s plans after graduation are to move to Columbus, Ohio with her husband and start a new career in Graphic Design. She is excited to start working with clients and flex the skills she has learned over the last three and half years of being in West Liberty’s Arts and Communication College.

She believes that the virtual graduation is a great idea and nice to come and go as they please. It works better for her family in the middle of the global pandemic and rather be safe than sorry and believes there should be more options like this for graduation in the future.

The virtual graduation will be held on Dec. 5, 2020 at 11:00 am and will be broadcast on Topper Station. The Trumpet Staff congratulates all graduating seniors this semester and wishes you the best of luck on your future endeavors. Be proud to be a Hilltopper wherever this world takes you! There are big things ahead of the Fall graduating class of 2020. Congratulations Graduates of every college!