Dear 2020 graduates,

We can only imagine how you’re feeling.

We know graduation — not just the completing of courses and the handing-over of a diploma, but the ceremony, the celebration, the hugs, and the (hopefully responsible) parties — are an important milestone in the life of any young woman or young man. They are rituals we perform, whether we know it or not, that help us feel not just that another page of the calendar has turned but that we have actually transitioned from children to adults.

And we can only imagine the hurt and frustration you’re feeling as the coronavirus and related shutdown orders prevent you from walking on a stage in front of your family and all your peers, stop you from that backyard grad party with your family, keep you from that night on the town with your friends.

We are glad to see area schools trying to salvage what they can, like the virtual commencement ceremonies planned by Alpena Community College and Alpena Public Schools, or Rogers City Area Schools’ plan to wait and see if shutdowns are lifted later this summer for a more traditional event.

We know it’s not the same.

But know this, dear graduates: Your community is proud of you.

This virus and the circumstances in which you’ve been thrown cannot take away your accomplishments. They cannot take away the knowledge you’ve gained, the skills you’ve developed, the relationships you’ve built, the friends you’ve made. Your hard work earned you all of that, and nothing can take it away.

And that hard work has built a road for you leading into the future, a path you still can take into success in careers, in families, in whatever you choose, if you keep working.

Plus, you are a generation made in fire, in trial and tribulation, perhaps the next Greatest Generation, because you have seen what happens when the world is challenged and you can learn from our successes and failures.

We can’t wait to see what you do.

(THE ALPENA NEWS)