Senior Strong 2020

Attention Class of 2020! It’s time to stand up, straighten your mortarboard, and make a new plan.

There is no going back. With each and every new press conference at local, state, and national levels, the light of truth keeps getting brighter, and you can not deny that it is time to embrace what we love to call “The New Normal.”

Before you start to get feisty about my blunt words, let me say this… I am wearing three hats as I write this.

I am a high school teacher, I am a parent of a 2020 senior, and I am an Army spouse who has had her fair share of missed milestones. I am not chastising or shaming anyone—I am just a realist. My hope is that in the aftermath of all this, we raise up a whole class of realists.

If you are a high school senior, chances are that three-quarters of your year is already over. Technically you passed with a C because, in the real world, three-quarters of something is 75% effort. If your parents would be upset that you earned a 75% in any class, pour them another “quarantini” and tell them to deal.

After all, as Aldous Huxley said, “It’s a brave new world.”

All banter aside, Seniors, I urge you to grieve for the things you will miss out on this year.

Maybe it’s prom. Maybe it is the last spring sports season or band concert. Maybe it is the pomp and circumstance of graduation. Maybe it is the simple fact that you miss your teachers and friends…

Mourn these things with your parents! They are probably taking this harder than some of you are. Be kind to them as you give yourself time to acknowledge the milestones you are losing.

But don’t grieve too long…

Because even though you are told that senior year is the “best” and all these “last moments” that you are supposed to savor are important, you are not entitled to them.

You have to let them go. I know it is hard, but the reality is this… True fulfillment can not be found in “what might have been,” but instead, can be found in “what is yet to come.” The sun still rises and sets and we must do the same. We must rise to the new and let the sun go down on the old.

Focus your Netflix bleary eyes on that. Focus on what is on the horizon, because the landscape has definitely changed, my friends.

Being locked down gives us plenty of time for self-reflection, and here are a few things to think about as you look down the road of life:

1. First of all, be thankful

Be thankful for your family, your home, your strengths, and your gifts. No matter where you are in life, someone has it worse. It doesn’t feel like it now, but I promise it is true. We all may attend the same school, but that is where the level playing field ends.

Being grateful for the things you have is a mindset that must be part of of your “new normal” foundation. Everything you do in life must build on this.

2. It is time to take control of your own life

How you spend your time is ultimately up to you. You have incredible autonomy over your time right now. For the first and maybe only time in your life, you have to make your own schedule and carve out your own learning path, so get up, get dressed, and get started.

The next episode of The Tiger King really isn’t going to change your life.

3. College is not the only path to a purposeful job or a purposeful life

This crisis has given us an opportunity to reflect on the jobs that are essential in our world right now, and for many of us, they are jobs that we shy away from in pursuit of something bigger and better. But, they are precisely the jobs that we depend on right now, and it is time to give “props” to the people who do these jobs. Fast food, supermarket and warehouse stockers and cashiers, trash collectors, and truck driving jobs don’t usually make it to the top of our lists when we think of dream jobs, but we would be in even more of a crisis without them.

This is a good opportunity to re-evaluate how we work and what jobs have made a difference in the past month. No job is beneath any of us! Dr. King said it best: “If you are called to be a street sweeper, sweep the streets as Michelangelo painted.”

4. Never underestimate the power of human connection

You miss school because you miss your friends and your teachers, and guess what? Your teachers miss you too.

If school was just about education, online learning would be fine. But it is not the same without real people! You may not want to admit that, but after months of learning on a computer you will find yourself aching for face-to-face relationships.

5. Finally, remember that “necessity is the mother of invention”

This is your time to be creative! Hold your own virtual prom. Take your own senior pictures. Find creative ways to be social. Stand out in your driveway in your cap and gown and have your family drive by and honk. Put together a Zoom senior breakfast. Make a senior photo video. There are a million ways to make this situation better. As we say in the military community—“Hunt the good stuff.”

We are proud of you, 2020 Seniors! You were born in the shadow of 9/11 and you will be reborn in the shadow of this pandemic. We have faith in you. Rise up, take control, and power forward.

SENIOR STRONG 2020!