It’s your turn, class of 2022

It’s graduation week, when I traditionally give pearls of wisdom to our graduates because I have lived on this earth so much longer than they have, and I’ve been through some things.

But I remembered that this year’s class has also been through some stuff – navigating Covid and what that meant for students, not to mention our country has been at war in myriad ways since before they were born. Their journey looks nothing like mine did, and most of my well-meaning advice might well miss the mark.

So, the only applicable advice I have that this year’s class can relate to is this: You’ve mastered survival mode. Now it is time to live.

By the time I was in high school, the Vietnam war had been over for five years; and thanks to a successful vaccination program, polio was eradicated in the United States in 1979, the year I began my freshman year at IPHS.

Although I did have to cancel my date to my first Spring Sports Banquet due to a scandalous case of mononucleosis, my grandparents weren’t dying of it.

In other words, I didn’t walk uphill both ways in the snow to school every day. I had it pretty easy, in retrospect. We had fun, we laughed, we were gifted Olivia Newton John wearing spandex and a headband singing about getting physical.

My generation lived through the Vietnam war, Watergate, and smatterings of political scandals here and there through the years. Most of your conscious life has been lived amidst some of the most unbelievable political and social times I have per sonally ever witnessed.

You’ve attended school in the weirdest of times – sometimes in your pajamas and sometimes wearing facemasks; and during your formative years, active shooter drills became as normal a practice for you as tornado drills were for my generation.

As I looked over all 124 of your faces, IPHS Class of 2022, while putting together the graduation issue, it dawned on me that I think many of you are going to offer wisdom to the world. And I hope the world listens. You have really seen more than a lot of generations do at your age – at least mine, anyway – and because I am an optimist at heart, I believe your generation can change things for the better.

Go out and do great things, Class of 2022. It’s your turn.