Diana Santiago

Ethnic Studies & Sociology 

“Being first generation, this is what I was really looking forward to, especially my family because this would be the second graduation they’ve ever been to… for us seniors, being here for four years that’s the stepping stone we hear about, so it’s always nice to finalize that.”

Katy Storer

Kinesiology

“I think the hardest part for me about graduation not happening, or being delayed, is that we don’t really have an end of our chapter. It’s just kind of a weird transition. It’s really sad not being able to say goodbyes… but a good thing out of this is I know I will stay in touch with people that I want in my life, so it’s not the end of the world.”

Anthony Estrada

Public Health

“A silver lining out of this is that we have more time now as seniors to think about our next steps, whereas before we’d be stuck between going to school, extracurriculars and other stuff but now we can work on our professionalism—resumes and looking for jobs, things like that.”

Soyeon Kim

Kinesiology & Pre-Med 

“I’m studying for the MCAT right now to go into medical school, so just being able to be home and have my family and my sisters with me has been really helpful to my emotional health while studying for such a difficult test.”

Michael Odman

Finance 

“When graduation eventually comes, if we do have a commencement ceremony, it’ll be kind of cool if we’re able to come back to Corvallis and see our friends and campus one last time and say goodbye.”

Orlando Nunez

Speech Communications

“I was looking forward to the graduation, who wasn’t? But I think the biggest thing was that my family was more excited than I am.”

Sonya Boyd

Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

“At first they weren’t going to cancel it and then they postponed it, but technically for me and most people like my friends, they’re moving on and going to grad school so they won’t be going in the fall. I personally wouldn’t go because it’s too far away.”

Spencer Dalton

Recreation & Resource Management

“I’ve been trying to come from a place of more positivity and figure that this is something that everyone is doing it’s not just an OSU thing or an Oregon thing, and so we probably are pretty fortunate that all it is school is being done remote and we can still be on track to graduate.”

Ethan Zimmerman

Chemical & Humanitarian Engineering

“I wasn’t even sure if I was going to go to commencement in the first place just because it’s such a big event and takes so long, what I was more bummed about was how my school… usually does a school specific graduation ceremony and I really wanted to go to that.” 

Stephanie Dixon

Business Administration

“This is my eighth year working towards my bachelor’s degree, so I’ve had a lot of setbacks in the process already and to finally be at that point … and for it to be like ‘oh you’ve finally hit that marker and now you’re not going to walk like you were supposed to.’”