WATERVILLE — Standing in a line of cap-and-gown-clad graduates just before Colby College’s commencement ceremony was scheduled to start, it didn’t quite feel real to Maryjane Pennington. Or at least not yet.

Her time at Colby was over, and she said that was a bittersweet realization.

“We love this place, but I think Colby has prepared us well to move on,” Pennington said.

“Here’s hoping,” fellow graduate Chris Patten quipped.

Minutes later, Pennington and Patten walked onto Miller Lawn for their final act as Colby students. They were part of the school’s 204th — and largest-ever — graduating class, representing 46 states and 20 countries.

Senior class speaker Michelle Bechtel said she felt a similar way to Patten and Pennington at the start of her final semester. She said she wanted to leave Colby with a bang.

So on the first day of her final semester, she tore a piece of pink legal pad paper and wrote “The Michelle Manifesto” — a list of things she swore to live by until she graduated. No. 1 was “fall hard and fail often.” No. 4 was “say yes,” and — for obvious reasons, she said in her speech — No. 5 was “learn to say no.”

Bechtel added No. 25 at the end of her speech: “Choose to be kind, and smile back as the world bares its teeth.”

“I have no idea what lies ahead, but I can choose to embrace the uncertainty, knowing that the people I love will be there to catch me when I fall,” she said. “Because we did this together.”

For Patten, who majored in government and history, the next stop is Tanzania, leading hiking trips up Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest peak in Africa and a summit he’s yet to climb. Pennington will use her majors in computational biology and statistics to work at a rural, critical-access hospital in upstate New York as a data analyst, helping the hospital adopt and adapt to new technology. Nisha Pedda, who majored in environmental policy, will join an investment firm in Boston.

With graduates flinging far and wide after commencement, Colby President David Greene urged this not to be the class’s final stop in Maine. He encouraged the class in his opening address to always come back to the state and continue giving back.

“The way you contributed and shaped this community over the last four years is something that will shape us forever,” Greene said. “My advice to you is to keep on coming back. Remember that you always have a home here. Whenever you hear Noah Kahan singing ‘Maine,’ come on back to Maine.”

At Bates College in Lewiston — one of Colby’s closest academic and athletic partners — Sunday’s 504 graduates were also encouraged to continue making the world a better place. Bates President Garry Jenkins, in his opening address in front of Coram Library, said he hoped students will bring the skillsets and values acquired at Bates into their future endeavors.

“This is why higher education is essential to a healthy democracy,” Jenkins said. “This is why Bates is essential.”

Bates’ commencement speaker was University of Pennsylvania professor Angela Duckworth, a co-founder of the nonprofit Character Lab, which helps lower burdens to scientific insight in schools. Duckworth, author of the bestseller “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” has focused much of her research and work on the impact of cellphone use on young people.

Duckworth said she realized willpower alone is not enough to reduce digital consumption. Instead, she said regulating environmental triggers to reinforce positive habits can help tackle screen overuse.

“Cellphones are, effectively, adult pacifiers,” Duckworth said. “Shaping your situation before your situation shapes you starts simply.”

Graduates of both schools navigated an increasingly digital age — one that accelerated drastically during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the graduates who spent four years at the colleges would have left high school in 2021, during the peak of the pandemic and the social change that came with it.

But with the height of the pandemic now firmly in the rearview mirror, graduates are focused on their future. And on processing their last four years.

“It hasn’t hit yet,” Olivia Joaquin, a Bates graduate from Washington, D.C., said. “It doesn’t feel like goodbye.”