“Are you ready?” Cassandra Mosley turns back and asks Kelsey Nicolay as they stand together, waiting in line as President Fred Finks calls in alphabetical order the names of the 2013 graduates, most of whom spend their last defining moments of their college experience sitting next to unacquainted classmates, or otherwise complete strangers.

Annie Miller, one step in front of Mosley, walks the aisle slowly toward her diploma.  In June, when the religion major returns home, she will walk another aisle barefoot towards her husband to a song from the movie “Pride and Prejudice.” A white gown, rather than a black gown, will sway at her feet. 

When Miller accepts the diploma, Finks shakes Miller’s hand, asking her, “So are you headed back to Arizona?” Miller knows Finks’ children because they attend her church in Arizona.  She thinks, of his attempt at small talk, “There’s no time for conversation now, Fred!” while she is broadcast on the football stadium’s score board and Finks has a list of names for which to call.  Instead, she says to him, “Yeah, tomorrow,” surprised, and continues walking.

Once Mosley’s name is called, she cheers, seeming to fist pump with both arms in the air in the photo that Liz Hosfeld, from the Times-Gazette snaps of her. Mosley is the blonde, blue-eyed girl with an agape mouth, seeming to yell, “Yeah!” in the photo that will run on the front page May 12.  Embarrassing Mosley for some time after it runs, she will eventually be proud of her expression, perhaps seeing it for its victory, rather than the awkward second suspended in time. 

Mosley hears her family’s chants for her.  So excited and proud to graduate, she nearly laughs with the “butterfly feeling” in her stomach when she receives her diploma from Finks.  After she takes her pictures, she smiles all the way to the restroom, and then reclaims her seat.

Mosley was so absorbed in the moment that she didn’t hear Kelsey Nicolay’s name called after hers, but when Nicolay’s name is called, she has someone helping her receive her diploma.  People like Mosley have seen Nicolay almost every day since they have been at Ashland but have never talked to Nicolay before. 

It’s Nicolay’s last walk.  After having walked from Kem Hall to the Center for the Arts for four years to complete her communications major and sing in women’s chorus, Dr. Finks hands her the diploma.  Cane in one hand, Nicolay gives her diploma to Suzanne Salvo, the Director of Disability Services, who has led Nicolay to the stage. Though Nicolay cannot see Finks, she remembers the times he helped her make that walk—when crossing King Road, which Nicolay describes as an “evil” intersection—and once offered her a ride in his car to Convo after her class ended in CFA.  Because she is blind, she cannot see the diploma or the expression on Finks’ face, but she can tell he is excited for her and will miss having her on campus.

She will miss AU, too, though perhaps not King Road, which was troublesome for her to cross, unable to see and hear at times whether the cars had stopped for her.  Nicolay’s row passes and sits down in their order for the next row of Ashland University graduates to be announced on May 11, 2013.

—————

Mosley always assumed she knew everyone at her small school.  With about 2,200 undergraduates, the size creates that illusion.  Standing on the track waiting to be organized into a line by degree and major before graduation, Mosley realizes how few people she knows around her.

There were many times that she thought she needed a bigger school, having chosen Ashland because she went to a small high school, it was within her comfort zone at the time.  Though she regretted not meeting more people and making more friends like she might have at a bigger school, surrounding her were many students that she didn’t know. 

For a while she thought her college experience wasn’t how she had wanted it to be, though she loved her professors and small class sizes and knew she wouldn’t have done as well at a bigger school, perhaps one known for its parties. She had decided long ago that she wasn’t going to miss Ashland, but two nights after graduation, she will have a meltdown while she lay in bed at night, realizing that she misses AU terribly, sad that part of her life is over.

Miller will also miss AU and its community.

While she usually cries at sentimental events, she doesn’t consider graduation to be a tear-jerker, though she is glad to walk.  But with all the changes in her life in the next six months — graduation, first “big girl” job, and marriage — she won’t cry at her wedding either, which she will attribute to her adjusting to so many changes.  But she will love her life then, as she has loved it while Ashland — simply in a different way.

Miller originally had been debating whether or not to walk for graduation, but her sister-in-law convinced her that it was the last time many of her friends would get to see her.  So she participated in the “rite of passage” of graduating with her class.

“Looking back, it’s interesting to know that the people next to me were on such different paths.  I knew I wasn’t doing the same thing as anyone else there because I was the only one there from Arizona,” Miller will say later in her reflections, though she believes that is what makes AU special — that the small school allows students to know most of their class, which Miller had. 

But like Mosley, Miller also wishes that she had met more people during her time, perhaps within the organizations that she was already involved in, such as The Well.

Miller, Mosley, and Nicolay have never spoken to each other before today — both Miller and Mosley knew of Nicolay, but Miller and Mosley had never even seen each other before, and neither had spoken to Nicolay.  But the friendliness of the girls make the time enjoyable, and Miller grows grateful that the girls are “nice and easy to talk to.”

“We’re all together in that moment,” Mosley will say. “We are all graduating in that moment, and it’s just cool because you don’t know anyone’s stories.  You don’t know anything about anyone.  You just know that we all went to Ashland.”

———-

Talking to Nicolay is perhaps the appropriate conclusive ending to Mosley’s academic career at Ashland, though Nicolay does not know it.

Mosley has worked at Camp Cheerful in Strongsville, Ohio, for two summers, helping youth with a variety of disabilities.  She loves Camp Cheerful so much that even though she will enjoy her job at Ajilon Accounting Principals as an Operations Assistant, she will long to be back at camp.  Mosley is used to working jobs that allow her to give back to people, jobs that are empowering or meaningful, so she will not expect to work as a secretary after August, commuting from home, but she will love the people she will work with.

After graduating today with a degree in psychology and business administration, in the upcoming months she will wish to return to school for occupational therapy so that she can work with youth with disabilities.  Her dream career is to work within the Special Olympics.  She does not dream to make a lot of money, nor does she dream of marrying and having kids.

Her answer for her goal in life is cliché and corny, perhaps mushy and fairytale-esque-ambitious, but she lives her life this way, and she means it.

“I honestly just want to make an impact on people’s lives.  I just want to help people and make a difference.  I don’t care if they remember my name,” she will say.

Mosley used to see Nicolay — a young woman who often could use help but appeared self-sufficient and remarkably independent — in Convo (eating with the help of someone having carried her tray for her) or walking across campus by herself.

“She had the campus down-pat.  I mean, people helped her with doors and stuff, but she knew her way around.  It was fascinating,” Mosley later will say about her.  “I thought college was so hard and challenging, and I don’t have a disability.  So sometimes I would see her and think, ‘Why am I complaining?’”

Nicolay was not only an inspiration to Mosley, but she was also a reminder of all the youth Mosley loved at Camp Cheerful. But Mosley never got a chance to talk to Nicolay — never even learned her major.

Until commencement.

———-

“Do you think I can make it back in time?” Mosley asks Miller and Nicolay, in between the three of them cheering for the names called of people they knew, and in between texts sent back and forth by graduating friends who aren’t listening to the guest speaker because they are too cold to care.

Mosley has to pee so badly that she considers leaving the ceremony before Finks calls her name — the cold is making it worse, her excitement is making it worse.

The three girls joke about it.  Eventually, Mosley decides to wait until after she receives her diploma and then sneak back into her row.

For Nicolay, sitting next to people she doesn’t know is positive. She is used to starting a conversation with whoever is near her, so it is not difficult for her to fit in with the people around her.  “Our row had fun,” she will say later about the day.

Miller, quiet when she first meets people so as to see how she will fit in, is not shy now, nor was she shy during her time at AU, where she worked in the deli at Convo making students sandwiches. 

She will miss the ladies she worked with and send them wedding pictures after her wedding.  She will miss encountering a regular in the deli line and making his usual sandwich while another’s bread is toasting.

She spent her last semester at AU planning her wedding and participating in religious life.  She has already found a job to apply for in which she meets all qualifications for the position. 

“I knew from the moment I made that resume that I was going to get that job,” she will say in December, looking back, remembering the sense of peace that fell over her.

Two weeks after she is married, she will get the job and work for Arizona Baptist Children Services where she will transport children from supervised visits between parents and foster parents, and she will work with parents to improve their situations so that they may regain custody of their children.

Now in the 47-degree weather, Miller will remember being amazed by how many ways they were able to describe how cold they were.

She will say the cold unified them because sometimes complaining brings girls together.  She will say it was easy to commiserate with the girls around her, but the complaints made them feel better.

The girls on the other side of Miller are saying that they would rather be drunk than be this cold, and the hilarious brainstorming of possibilities continues throughout the ceremony, in addition to the possibilities of Mosley’s options for emptying her bladder.

“It’s great when you are able to find the common thing,” Miller will say.  “It was our last day, so our excitement was high and our frustration was high, so we were able to forget the fact that we didn’t know each other.”

———-

“I don’t know the words,” Mosley whispers to Kelsey.  The music to the alma mater begins.

“I don’t either,” Nicolay whispers back.

Both girls chuckle.

By now they have exchanged majors and talked about how excited they both were to graduate. 

They have participated in small talk and agree that it is freezing outside.  Mosley is struck by how curious Nicolay is, which she assumes is natural, considering her disability, and Nicolay, whom Mosley will later describe as incredibly nice and welcoming, seems very interested in what Mosley had to say.

What they don’t learn about each other is that, like Mosley, Nicolay has also worked as a counselor at a camp called Highbrook Lodge, dedicated to the visually impaired, and will attend there as a camper this summer. 

She will also tutor Braille to kindergarteners, camp each weekend with her family near Wooster, and search for jobs for months.

Though they don’t share their life stories or learn a lot about each other, the opportunity to talk to Nicolay is important to Mosley.  She has always been inspired by Nicolay, admiring her from afar. 

It’s not the first time Nicolay has been an inspiration to someone.  She has been told that many times. 

Born with severe optic nerve hypoplasia, she has been blind since birth. Most people tell her they cannot imagine going to college or living on their own if they were in her position.  

When she participated in Ashland Idol in 2011, the organizers were amazed by how she fit in with the other participants.  

“The only difference was that I couldn’t see, but everyone commented on how I just went for it and did not let my blindness stop me.  I usually don’t.  I just don’t care if people say I can’t do something, and they are amazed at watching me try and then succeed,” Nicolay will say.

And after listening to the conversations today about the other students’ positive achievements around her, she will think that she wants to accomplish some of the same things, too.

But in Mosley’s eyes, she has already accomplished more.  Seeing her graduate today and being able to sit next to her, makes the day special for Mosley.  It doesn’t feel weird.  After seeing her every day, talking to her now is “just cool.”

———-

Senior Class President Shannon Frasher offers the benediction and the AU Concert Band begins the recessional. 

The ceremony ends.  Graduation is over, and AU is now a completed journey for 445 undergraduates.  The three girls perhaps say goodbye to each other and wish each other good luck, but six months later, none of them will remember if they had or not. 

Mosley will remember, however, realizing at the end of the ceremony that she has spent the two hours of her last day at AU laughing with two girls she may never speak to again.  Because it is cold, she leaves soon after, having taken only a few photos of herself to remember the event.

Miller leaves to eat Subway with her family in Clayton Lobby to be away from crowds of people.  Tonight she will go to her roommate’s parents’ house to take pictures and play Dutch Blitz as their “last hoorah.” 

Someone who Miller is not yet acquainted with will drive her to the airport the tomorrow. 

After talking for an hour in the car, they will become best friends, and this Amanda Roberts will plan to visit Miller in Arizona in December.

Nicolay and her family attend the luncheon.  Later, her family will surprise her with a cake and celebrate her graduation in their family camper.

But for now, the three, cold girls leave each other and go their separate ways, departing with their families, off to begin their new adventures.