Graduation ceremonies for polytechnics and institutes of technical education have been cancelled in view of the circuit breaker measures.

Ethan Ong, a student from Temasek Polytechnic's (TP) Communication and Media Management (CMM) was initially disappointed that he would not be able to experience this important milestone, which was supposed to be held on the third week of May.

"One gripe my friend had was: why not postpone graduation instead of cancelling it?" the 20-year-old told Mothership.

But he understood that in these uncertain times, the school had their hands full in preparing for online learning classes and the risks of congregating together.

So, with seven of his friends, they decided that if they could not graduate physically, they could do it virtually - on Minecraft.

Building the auditorium from scratch

Minecraft is a popular video game where players can create an environment using digital blocks online. It was one of the games that Ong and his friends would play together.

In a mere four hours, the team of eight scoured Google for images of TP's auditorium and built their virtual version block by block, adding some extraordinary details such as in-house fireworks.

Attending their graduation

On April 10, the eight friends donned their virtual graduation gowns and readied themselves for their Minecraft polytechnic graduation.

Like the real deal, their 30-minute graduation ceremony had a witty graduation speech, a 'dean' handing out their artificial diplomas, and of course, the graduation song.

They had posted the server link for other TP students to join in. However, the server could only accommodate up to 10 people, and a Minecraft account costs $30 to create, so they were the only attendees.

Ong filmed, edited and uploaded the humorous ceremony onto YouTube. "Bow, bow."

You can watch the video here.

Birds of the same feather

Another TP student, Anne Zenn Tan, also conducted her own virtual graduation on April 6 with five of her friends, hosting it on the video conferencing platform Zoom instead.

The 20-year-old told Mothership that the school had emailed them virtual backgrounds of TP's landmarks in lieu of their cancelled graduation, which gave them the idea of conducting their walk-in ceremony on Zoom.

Although "completely unnecessary", Tan and her friends made the ceremony as authentic as possible, dressing fancy, wearing makeup, and even appointing an emcee to give a speech and present their diplomas.

Tan said that because of the unique Covid-19 situation that cancelled their physical ceremony, it makes it special that they were probably the pioneering batch to conduct such an extraordinary virtual ceremony.

"You could say that it was more memorable (than a physical ceremony), because we made it our own," she said.

Top photo from Ethan's YouTube video and @annezenn 's Instagram post.