Dear Class of 2020,
You navigated through a tumultuous year. You had your senior year cut short. No prom, no traditional graduations, maybe
none at all. Your sports seasons were
put on hold, championships never played for.
No bonding one last time on your
senior class trip. Never a chance to
walk the halls of your high school for those last few days and say goodbye and
thank you to your special teachers. Or
maybe even the janitor that treated you with kindness for all of those
years. (That was my case. Our janitor was one of the kindest people at
our school, he was like my school grandfather.)
Of course, there is email, going back sometime next year, talking to
someone on Zoom or some other online web conferencing form, but nothing takes
the place of real-life experience. And it is also very important to share some
remaining times with your friends. In my
senior year, my best friend and I would talk and dream about our futures. The future will come soon enough, you need
every last minute to be young, silly, and free. You do not need to be home, isolated, not
knowing when you could ever go out again. It was bad, and do not let anyone else tell
you otherwise. Some of you have started
college. Some online, others virtually. Others may have put their plans on hold until
this pandemic is not a factor in our safety.
Some of you may have lost a loved one or friend to COVID-19. This disease has taken a lot from all of us,
in many different ways, throughout the world.
But when I think about you, the class of 2020, I am reminded
of how you came into this world.
Generally speaking, the class of each year starts kindergarten if you
are born in around mid-September. That
means that you were born sometime between the middle of September of 2001 and
September of 2002. September 2001 was
one of the most devastating days our country has ever seen. We just had a day of remembrance on Friday
(this is being posted on September 13.) I
will never forget that day in our history and the sheer horror of it. My generation had never seen anything like
that before. My parents’ generation had
the assassination of JFK, and World War II saw the destruction at Pearl
Harbor. But this all unfolded for all of
us to see, and it changed our country forever.
Smoke smoldered for days; the cleanup took a long time. Some of you came into this world as the smoke
smoldered and people were still trying to find out of their loved ones were
really safe, lying somewhere in a hospital bed, or never coming home again. It
was a time of crisis, fear, and uncertainty.
There were economic downturns, and we never knew what the next day would
bring. Shortly after, there were people
sending anthrax through our mail system and trying to kill journalists and
politicians. We never really knew when
it was going to end. The same could be
said about our country right now. We do
not know when this pandemic will end. Our
economy is weak, and there is civil unrest.
I wish that you in the class of 2020 could have seen what our country
was like at that time. There were no
Democrats or Republicans, just people. We
didn’t fight about whose beliefs were right or wrong, we just needed to take
care of our brothers and sisters. For
those first responders at Ground Zero, it did not matter who the person was
they were trying to save. They were just
trying to save them. Right now, our citizens
are turning on each other. At very least,
some will not respect others rights to safety.
Others are literally shooting and killing their own country
members.
Class of 2020, you came into this world at one of our worst
crisis times, and you graduated and became an adult in another one of our worst
crisis times. That makes you very unique. In fact, I do not believe that there is another
group of students who were born and entered adulthood at such a crisis time in
our country’s history. But that also
makes you very resilient. You know what
it is like to have to improvise and learn to adapt to the absolute worst of
circumstances. You understand that life
can change in a few days’ time without warning.
You certainly have learned to create new ways of doing things,
particularly learning. And most
importantly, you have learned that it is crucial to keep looking towards the
future. Every one of us have to be
reminded of that; I have to remind myself on a daily basis that this will not last
forever. We are all required to look
towards the future and plan for it despite what is going on in our daily lives
which have been disrupted. But your
class in particular was the first and maybe only class to have to work through
some very unusual circumstances and still pursue your education. You were having to make tough decisions about
your safety, trying to determine whether it was safe to go to a campus or
not. And maybe you made the decision
that this is not the best year for that to happen. Whatever it was, you learned that you had to
make the best decision for your life at the time. That is, by definition, being an adult.
For all of those reasons, you are a very special group of
young adults. I believe that you are a
very unique and wonderful group of people who will change the world. You have been tested even before you entered
into the world of adulthood and learned how to deal with some very difficult
circumstances. It taught you how to be a
survivor, how to think differently to adapt to your circumstances. You were forced to be creative in your approach
to learning, to try new things, and to have to stick it out despite
uncertainty. Those are all great
qualities in leaders. I for one cannot
wait to see what you do and how you rise to the occasion in this world. You already have.
I wish all of you, the class of 2020, the very best as you
grow into adulthood and throughout the rest of your life. I have no doubt we are going to be seeing
some very amazing things from you. You
are special.
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