Grant Marshall poses with his family on Monday, June 1 outside of Creswell High School with mom Natalie, father Jason, and sister Allie, 12. Marshall plans on attending Lane Community College. ERIN TIERNEY/THE CHRONICLE
Dear Graduates,
Congratulations. You’re out!
I’m sure that graduating from high school amid a global pandemic is not what you expected. Welcome to life.
On the bright side, you have a great story to tell for the next 75 years.
It must be weird saying farewell without the company of your friends. But, instead of dressing in unfamiliar clothing and waiting for your name to be called in a traditional setting, you get to be inventive. Your generation is remarkably creative at building online communities and events. I’m sure you already have something cooking. Is it possible to have a virtual keg’r? (Sorry, parents.)
Staying on the bright side: You don’t have to worry about shaking with the right hand and receiving your diploma with the left in front of a bunch of people, and you won’t hear someone read a 10-second blurb about your spirit, devotion, and plans. You know who’s heading to the military, college, traveling, lineman’s school, or starting work in the trades. Best of all, with no formal ceremony, you have been spared from hearing, “You are the future.”
As for that future, at your 10-year reunion, you can catch up with everyone, and at the 20th you can hear the truth about how it’s all working out while you eat some food and share an age-appropriate beverage. When you get to the 30, it all gets real, but don’t waste any time thinking about it now.
You’ve been lucky to go to school in Oregon in healthy environments staffed by caring people. It wasn’t so in DeWitt Clinton, my alma mater. When I graduated in 1972, there wasn’t a virus turning everything inside out, but the war in Vietnam was tearing the country apart, and high schools were battlegrounds. My high school experience did not include big games, proms, dances (I went to an all-male high school), homecomings or secret parties in the woods (we had no woods). I often felt I was doing time instead of being educated. After three years of inmate status, I wanted no part of graduation.
I did want my diploma, so I bounced triumphantly into the administration office for one last time. The dean, who kicked me out of class three weeks earlier for talking back to a teacher, extended a warm hand and said, “We have a service award for you.” I was stunned; what service had I done except making a few teachers’ lives miserable? It turned out that editing the school literary magazine earned me a service pin (I still have it). I took the pin, the diploma, and told the dean, “Don’t forget to let me know when they demolish this place!”
I asked my wife and daughter the other day what they recall about their graduations. My daughter, who had two of them, remembers nothing except they were “too long,” and my wife groaned, “Ugh!” Even so, I am sorry your parents and grandparents won’t get to see you on stage and then take you out for dinner. Graduation ceremonies are more relevant to them than to you. They wanted to get out of the house and buy everyone dinner.
The Coronavirus is filling all of us with romantic notions about a return to normal. As you consider graduating, you start thinking of your glory days, about the classes, games, music, and time spent with your friends – everything that is denied looks good. You may start singing “A Little Ditty About Jack and Diane.” You know, “Hold onto sixteen as long as you can, changes come around real soon make us women and men.” Don’t get caught in that trap; you are more than that.
I hope that in the years leading to your graduation, you have been surrounded by love. I hope that high school was an excellent time for you. And that you never lose your real friends.
You entered high school as a child, and now you leave as an adult. You don’t need a ceremony to confirm you have fulfilled the obligatory part: The basic course. Your real graduation is embracing a horizon of possibilities armed with the freedom and responsibility to create the life you want.
Dear Graduates, here is to you.
Now, take a deep breath, hug your family, and spread your wings!
