Class of 2020: You will get through this experience

I see you. I see your disappointment and your frustration as you complete the final days of your last school year in isolation. I see your excitement as you pick up the fragments of what should have been a celebration of all of the hard work and dedication you threw into your studies over the past years.
    

I see you. Because I’ve been there.
    

As a graduate of St. Mary’s Dominican’s Class of 2006, I know what it’s like to have a completely altered senior experience. I know what it’s like to be away from your friends, to miss out on all of the experiences you’ve heard about for years, to not know what will happen in the days, weeks and months ahead. I know what it’s like to have doubts, anger and, yes, eventually joy. 
    

Because I also know that, while it may not seem like it right now, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
    

You will have a commencement experience. It won’t be the same, but it will happen. There will be a celebration. It won’t necessarily mark the culmination of your studies, but it will mark a moment when you and your friends are able to come together for one final time – one final moment before you go your separate ways and set the world on fire as you achieve your goals and dreams in the next chapter of your lives.
    

Despite what it may seem like now, these final experiences are simply that: experiences. They don’t negate or take away your dedication, your hard work and everything that has defined your high school or college career.
The lack of a May commencement ceremony or senior prom or any other missed activity doesn’t diminish the lessons that you’ve learned, the obstacles that you’ve overcome and the goals that you’ve achieved.
    

You might not get to walk across that stage, throw your caps up in the air, hold that diploma proudly as you beam at family and friends who have gathered for your moment at this time. But that doesn’t mean that your high school or college experience has been for naught.
    

Because one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned was in my senior year. I spent the year in California in a new school, away from friends and family. I didn’t return to the transition schools set up in the archdiocese after Hurricane Katrina. But when I finally came home and began packing my things for college, I saw my white graduation cap and gown from Dominican. 
    

I didn’t get to walk across the stage in it; it was wrapped tidily in its clear Jostens package. In the moment, I was upset. But, in the years to come and especially now, I know that senior year was a turning point for me. It allowed me to recognize my own strength, and it reminded me to never take anything for granted. 
    

Strength, perseverance, integrity and appreciation. Those are things, above all, that take many people years to learn, if they learn them at all. 
    

You, the Class of 2020, will learn that now – and those defining characteristics will be your class legacy and the hallmarks of who you are as individuals. 
    

Dr. Heather Bozant Witcher can be reached at [email protected].