Last year ended with terrible uncertainty. Your junior spring was cancelled, including proms, sports, and other important events. You watched the class of 2020 lose their senior year, and you undoubtedly wondered what yours would hold. Each step from August to graduation has been tentative. Each day a guessing game. Your senior year has been hidden behind a mask, isolated in quarantine, and anonymized virtually – a year characterized by uncertainty and confusion. You endured a level of angst not seen in recent generations.
As someone who graduated over 30 years ago, I must confess that normalcy is a myth, and you have taught me that lesson. Over the course of the last year, we have watched you make the hidden seen, connect beyond the isolation, and stubbornly refuse to disappear into the cloud. While we older folks have been somewhat paralyzed, you have navigated all of this with aplomb and maturity beyond your years. You embraced the angst of life and have emerged with a perspective unlike any other Senior Class in history. You not only survived and overcame it. I believe you have transcended it all.
Concepts like normalcy or the good old days are simply idealized myths built upon the best of intentions, but idealized versions of life often hold us back more than they help because those things were rarely as good as we remember them. Memory is like a slick Instagram account – the bad stuff has been airbrushed out. The snapshots we choose are never as perfect as they seem. Consequently, as people experience the angst of life contrasted with these myths of perfection, they often assume they are somehow abnormal. On the contrary, we all struggled to navigate it all at your age, but few of us faced the challenges you shared. Just remember, we only post the pics we want others to see.
Your class, however, has endured this corporately on a level unseen in generations – a lifetime of angst crammed into one critical year. You can see beyond the myths because you endured it together. Faced with so many airbrushed versions of reality, you could have easily despaired, but I believe you are the men and women who have transcended the angst to emerge as the most resilient cohort in a generation. You will not be trapped in a perpetual adolescence, for you can see clearly through masks older generations cannot, and you can see the future better than we can.
After navigating so much simply to graduate, you can handle just about anything. Seniors in my district were blessed to be in a community that navigated all the insanity to keep school open their senior year, but many seniors were not so fortunate. In either case, however, you will find your fellow seniors as resilient as you. This year provided you with a good template for life: no problem is too big and no one else can define how you face adversity. Problems are meant to be solved and adversity is meant to be overcome. You have done both with grace and maturity beyond your years. Yes, aplomb.
I have written many messages to senior classes, but none as strange as this one. I might be missing it, but I think that’s the key. I cannot possibly understand what you have faced or overcome to graduate. None before you can, either, but we can nonetheless celebrate your stepping forward into adulthood as perhaps the best-equipped class in a generation for the uncertain but glorious future before us all. Congratulations, class of 2021, and much respect. You persevered, and you did so with a style all your own. God bless you all.
Tom Deighan is a public educator and currently serves as Superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. He may be reached at deighantom@gmail.com
