Class of 2020, boy, did you get a raw deal. You did everything that was asked of you—attending class, partaking in extracurricular activities, following (for the most part) the rules.
Now, when you should be walking across the dais with your classmates to accept your hard-earned diploma or recalling an evening at the prom or preparing for a graduation trip, you are instead keeping your social distance, wearing a mask and marking graduating virtually or in a ceremony unlike any other in our history.
You share going without a senior prom or a grand graduation ceremony with millions of others across America. If college campuses don’t open to in-person classes this fall, your anguish will continue. It is an unfortunate turn of events yet you must have the character to shake it off and move forward. There is no alternative.
COVID-19 upturned the world for all of us but you graduated and received your diploma.
Yes, you are graduating into a world with economic calamity all around—businesses closed causing millions of people to lose their jobs. Life as we all know will come with less—reduced services, governmental budgets slashed as a result of plunging revenues.
You cannot let hope fade. You must maintain faith in the United States of America and its citizens. In all of our history the people of America have never failed themselves nor their neighbors; we have never thrown up our hands and walked away.
It is a changed world and you can help make it into something different and better.
You got a raw deal, class of 2020, but what you do from this point will say a lot about you. —LAZ