The Class of 2020
Dublin Core
Title
The Class of 2020
Description
For many students in Wisconsin, March 2020 marked the official date when COVID-19 began to affect in-person activity on university and high school campuses. Instruction moved online to virtual meeting platforms, and in-person events, like commencement ceremonies, were canceled, postponed, or virtually attended. Students that were graduating in 2020 were faced with starting new chapters of their lives in social environments that were very different than the pre-pandemic ones they had known. This collection documents the experiences of five students who graduated in 2020. The experiences and stories vary in terms of each student’s academic and professional background.
Phareda Be and Yazmin Cruz graduated high school in 2020 and transitioned to their first year of college during the pandemic. As an assignment for their Ethnic Studies 101 course during the Fall 2020 semester, they both created personal archives that documented many of the important events of their lives including their high school graduations, the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, their first presidential election as voters, and their thoughts on the on-going social justice movements in our nation. Many of the photographs included in this collection are from those personal archives, and the quotations included in the descriptions of those photographs are pulled directly from their assignment prompts. Be and Cruz further reflect on their pandemic experiences through oral history interviews.
Brennan Christianson, Becca Schnabel, and Dr. DaJuan Ferrell are all graduate students from UW-Milwaukee who started their professional careers amid distinct barriers caused by the pandemic. Christianson and Schnabel are public historians who each share their experiences finding jobs within their field during a time when museums and other cultural institutions were closed to the public. Ferrell, a sociologist, shares his experience with writing and defending his dissertation as well as finding employment as a university instructor at an out-of-state institution.
Each of these five students, in The Class of 2020, has a unique pandemic story that starts during March 2020. While the first chapter of that story may have ended, the second one is just beginning.
Phareda Be and Yazmin Cruz graduated high school in 2020 and transitioned to their first year of college during the pandemic. As an assignment for their Ethnic Studies 101 course during the Fall 2020 semester, they both created personal archives that documented many of the important events of their lives including their high school graduations, the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, their first presidential election as voters, and their thoughts on the on-going social justice movements in our nation. Many of the photographs included in this collection are from those personal archives, and the quotations included in the descriptions of those photographs are pulled directly from their assignment prompts. Be and Cruz further reflect on their pandemic experiences through oral history interviews.
Brennan Christianson, Becca Schnabel, and Dr. DaJuan Ferrell are all graduate students from UW-Milwaukee who started their professional careers amid distinct barriers caused by the pandemic. Christianson and Schnabel are public historians who each share their experiences finding jobs within their field during a time when museums and other cultural institutions were closed to the public. Ferrell, a sociologist, shares his experience with writing and defending his dissertation as well as finding employment as a university instructor at an out-of-state institution.
Each of these five students, in The Class of 2020, has a unique pandemic story that starts during March 2020. While the first chapter of that story may have ended, the second one is just beginning.
Creator
Jamee N. Pritchard
Date
Spring 2021
Contributor
Jamee N. Pritchard
Collection Items
A Zoom Graduation Party
Becca Schnabel, pictured in the upper right-hand corner of the photograph, graduated from UW-Milwaukee in May 2020 with a master’s degree in public history and museum studies. Because of the cancellation of the in-person commencement ceremony along…
A New Dawn, A New Day, A New Job
This series of Facebook posts is of 2020 graduate Brennan Christianson as he accepts a new position, changes his employment status, and documents his first day at work. He graduated from UW-Milwaukee with a master’s degree in public history and…
Oral History Interview with Phareda Be
In this oral history interview with Phareda Be, she describes her experiences of graduating high school in 2020 at the height of the global coronavirus pandemic. She recollects how she felt about the transition to virtual learning in her last quarter…
Oral History Interview with Dr. DaJuan Ferrell
In March 2020 when university instruction moved primarily online, DaJuan Ferrell was tasked with learning how to teach his undergraduate students in a virtual environment. He also faced the prospect of finishing his doctoral research within new…
An End of an Era
The photograph depicts UW-Milwaukee freshman Phareda Be at her high school graduation in 2020. Because of the small size of her graduating class, Be had the opportunity to have an outdoor, in-person commencement ceremony. She describes this picture…
A Pandemic Job
Phareda Be poses in front of a mirror while wearing her Bath & Body Works uniform. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Be's father lost his job, and she stepped in to help contribute income to her family's household. While she describes the…
Portrait of a College Freshman
Phareda Be describes this photograph as the first picture taken of her after becoming a college freshman. She had just finished a professional photoshoot with the Boys and Girls Club and decided to go to the park to have some fun. "In this picture,"…
A New Chapter
Yazmin Cruz, a college freshman at UW-Milwaukee, stands in front of UWM's fountain on the first day of classes. It is a crisp and sunny fall day, and no other students are in sight. While her Fall 2020 semester was virtual, she traveled to campus…
The End?
Yazmin Cruz stands in her front garden, facing away from the camera, as her sister takes a photograph of her graduation cap. Although the camera is not on her face, she is still smiling at the idea of being a high school graduate. Like many other…
A Vote For Change
In October 2020, Yazmin Cruz voted in her first presidential election. Although the election was on November 3, 2020, she decided to cast her vote on October 18 via an absentee ballot. Because of the global pandemic, Americans had the opportunity to…