Like Keerthana, Alicia Munhupedzi used the Internet to find her dress – although it was a bit last minute.
“I thought, ‘Where can I get a nice dress that quickly and cheaply?'”
Answer? Depop, the second-hand clothing app popular with Gen Z shoppers, sold for $1.2bn (£890m) earlier this year.
Like others, Alicia felt that her outfit was important.
“Graduation, it’s a milestone, especially if you’re not planning on getting a master’s,” she says. “So, for me, there was a pressure.”
So much so that she couldn’t sleep properly the night before her ceremony and had to wake up in the morning to get ready. “I made it through today on two hours of sleep, water, good vibes, energy and a coffee.”
Knowing that all eyes will be on her when she is handed her degree, Keerthana says she was nervous for her graduation ceremony – but it went by faster than she thought.
“This is the only moment you get to yourself,” she says.
And was waking up at 05:00 and two hours of getting ready worth it?
“Yeah,” says Kirtan, “I can’t compromise on that.”
Additional reporting by Kate Berry and George Sandeman.
