Graduation Issue
Beck’s Call Whitworth’s president says the skills the pandemic gave you will help you change the world for good BY BECK TAYLOR, President of Whitworth University
T
o the coronavirus class of 2020: Congratulations on your achievements. Obtaining a degree is a worthy accomplishment under any circumstances. But you completed your studies under the most challenging conditions. Senior years were disrupted, trips canceled, events postponed, goodbyes lost, and celebrations missed. You endured far too many Zoom meetings and online lectures. But you prevailed, and you are forever changed as a result of this experience. As you reflect upon your significant accomplishments and the challenges of the past three months, I encourage you to remember these three important lessons: First, adaptability and perseverance are learned
character virtues that have served you well recently, and practicing these behaviors will continue to influence your lives in the future. Too often, we humans are bound by what we know, fenced-in by the things that are familiar. We know how to thrive in a world that makes sense to us. I promise this pandemic won’t be the last majorleague curveball you will face in life. And even if you could shelter from the storms on the horizon, your ability to creatively explore new realities, to grow in unfamiliar settings, and to weather the most difficult challenges — the ones that offer no immediate answers — will not only set you apart, but will also make the world better in the process.
Second, you are not in control — at least not as much as you’d like to think. Many of us fall into the trap of thinking that we control our own destinies. Sure, your choices, hard work, and abilities can significantly shape who you are and your place in the world. But all that can be lost in an instant. Talented people get downsized in recessions. Illness derails months of planning. Doors that opened to exciting opportunities slam shut without warning. So what do we hang on to? I encourage you to form your identity not by what the world thinks of you, or the success you achieve, but by the values and principles by which you live, by the ways you love and treat others, and by your commitments to serve worthy things that are bigger than yourselves. No one, and no circumstance, can take those standards from you. Finally, relationships matter. Presence matters. We’ve
Another Fairy Tale, Ending The Freeman High School students who witnessed a school shooting as sophomores are once again being forced to grow up too fast
S
enior year milestones are supposed to be fairy-tale moments: a montage of beautiful prom dresses, state track meets and senior-ditch-day lake trips, all climaxing with the weird gowns, stiff hats and long speeches at graduation. For the class of 2020, these milestones are just fairy tales. Part of growing up is realizing that life isn’t always a fairy tale. If you are a senior right now, you know what this realization feels like, and it feels remarkably similar to disappointment. I spent my last day at Freeman High School hugging my friends, dancing around the multipurpose room for a make-shift Sadie Hawkins dance, and sharing tears while Thomas Rhett’s country ballad, “Remember You Young” played in the background. I was optimistic. We would be back in a few weeks, I told my friends. We would get another goodbye — a real goodbye. This wasn’t the end for the class of 2020. I was wrong. That random Monday in March was my last day. I watched TV newscasters squash the senior year cliches I’d dreamed about with two words: “Canceled Indefinitely.”
14 INLANDER JUNE 4, 2020
BY MEGAN RUBRIGHT, Freeman High School senior From then on, our messages of hope would be texted instead of spoken. Laughter would be shared over video calls instead of being accompanied by hugs. Our fairy tale would only be experienced over a distance. I thought we’d get at least a month of in-person school, half of a spring sports season, a real prom, a normal graduation ceremony. I watched these dreams get canceled one by one, Technicolor expectations fading to gray disappointment. We graduated, apparently. No parties. No “Pomp and Circumstance.” We got an abrupt invitation, delivered without ceremony: Welcome to the real world. Congratulations, I guess? Graduation was supposed to be a formal goodbye.
We planned to sit in chairs, listening to speeches about our future, watching slideshows of the memories made in high school. It is a ceremony of closure, granting us a goodbye to high school and a hello to the new life ahead of us. The ceremony softens the scary moment seniors will face after they accept the diploma and cross the stage into a new chapter; many of us fear the transition from dependence on parents and teachers to navigating the harsh real world alone. My graduating class at Freeman knows too well what it’s like to be forced to grow up too fast. We witnessed a school shooting as sophomores. Our shelter had been shattered. The harsh world that adults tried desperately to hide from us as children was suddenly blinding us. The students all shared tears, shared anger, shared a loss of innocence that our families never experienced and couldn’t fully relate to. Our minds frantically processed the pain propelling us into adulthood. Though we experienced grief, fear, confusion and undeniable pain, we also shared newfound strength and mindfulness we didn’t know we possessed as 15 and