Letter to the Class of 2020: You May Not Walk Across the Graduation Stage, But You Will Change the Course of History

The following are words of encouragement and love for the 2020 graduating class of Humboldt State University. These messages come from some of the staff that work so closely you--advisors, mentors, and counselors--and a small handful of faculty from a variety of departments. These are just a few of the many people on the campus who love you and have accompanied you during your time at HSU. Faculty and staff at all universities are deeply saddened by the cancelling of one of the few rituals that reminds us why we all do what we do--commencement. We hope that some wonderful alternative to commencement will be planned, but in the meantime we wanted to put together some words of support for you. Our hope is that these words might also be a salve for graduating classes of 2020 at other universities as well.

Dear Class of 2020:

From Sarah Ray, Associate Professor and Program Leader, Environmental Studies

For some time now, I’ve been giving public lectures about climate anxiety, and how students at HSU are “coming of age at the end of the world.” Your generation is uniquely disadvantaged--you will be the first to die younger than your parents, earn less than your parents, and be more lonely, anxious, depressed, and suicidal than your parents. And of course, not to mention, climate change-- the biggest existential threat of your time. Nobody has had to face down that problem like you will have to. 

The point of me offering this grim picture is to point out that if you’re feeling anxious and despairing, you’re not crazy, and you’re not alone. And the current moment of coronavirus will test your generation even further. As if you needed more evidence that your generation is screwed. You don’t even get to walk the graduation stage. Yes, it is a terrifying time to graduate from childhood to adulthood. 

But you’re also uniquely positioned to make the most profound changes we all need. And it is a matter of your survival to focus on these strengths, not just the challenges. I have studied your generation closely, and there is a lot of good news about you:

1. You are going to make history. Did you need more evidence than those infographics showing how a virus spreads exponentially from individuals to show you how important you are in the world? An individual can make a difference, not just when they “stay at home for the greater good,” but equally when they do seemingly “small” things to make the world a better place. Scale is deceptive. Visualize the spread of your positive impacts, like Buddhists describe in a meditation called the “Great Ball of Merit”, and don’t even hesitate to get started on this work.
2. You are the most savvy about social media for community organizing, which is evidenced by the number of you involved in Mutual Aid and other forms of community support in this moment, despite your own hard conditions. This is a crucial skill of resistance and mobilizing for change.
3. You have been trained to cope with turbulence your entire college career, if not longer. Most of your professors have been teaching you these skills-- resilience, community support, self-care, analysis of power structures, using knowledge to change the world, critical media analysis, and ways to push different cultural, economic, and political levers to make larger-scale change. Our current moment is not the time to abandon these lessons. On the contrary, this is what you went to college to be able to address as leaders. Go forth! Do it! Fear is always part of the revolution. Turn it into action.
4. Your generation is the largest population in the country. Imagine what would happen if you participated in even just the most basic form of civic engagement possible to all of us-- voting? Politicize your anguish. In November, we will have the most historic election our country has ever faced, and  more than any other demographic, you have the potential to affect the outcome.
5. You are the most ethnically diverse population in the country. A new leadership is on the horizon. It is the most significant reason I have hope every day. And I’ll bet all of your professors feel the same way, which is why they keep teaching. Your idealism, passion, and desire to improve the world are a beacon for all of us.

You may have felt that walking across the graduation stage would be the climax of all your hard work. What if I told you that the hard work has only just begun? Who will you be? 

From Fernando Paz, Coordinator, El Centro Academico Cultural de HSU  

Corazón - A Haiku

Nebulous spring of 2020

A heavy, Corazón rejoicing

With Ancient Redwoods

From Alison O’Dowd, Professor of Environmental Science and Management:

It may seem like the end of the world right now, but keep in mind that this too shall pass.  We are going to need to be innovative, creative and forward-thinking to weather this storm.  We will need to listen to each other, cry with each other, and pick each other up again.  We can not do this alone.  We may be physically apart, but we can still lift up and help one another from a distance.

You may have imagined your graduation day as a glorious event, surrounded by your friends and family.  Even though your graduation from HSU may not end up the way you imagined, you can still celebrate your achievements and feel the love of those who have helped you along the way.  Consider sending out a graduation announcement electronically to your social network showing your smiling face and listing some of your achievements while in college and your aspirations for the future.  This can also be an opportunity to thank your loved ones for their support during your time in college.  The virtual hug you receive in return may be able to lift your spirits yet.

With an uncertain future and shaky job market, your venture into the ‘real world’ may take a different form than what you originally dreamed.  Again, creativity and innovation will rule the day.  You may need to move back home and help out your family for a while.  You may need to find a job where you can work from home or online.  Explore and think about ways you can get a jump on the job market for these types of opportunities.  

When this is all over (and it will be over one day), you can look back on this time of isolation and restrictions as the time when you built your resilience and drew on your social capital to grow stronger instead of meaker.  The world needs your spirit and energy, your insight and skills.  The world needs you more than ever.

From Rob Keever, CARE Services Coordinator:

Can you remember a time where you overcame a challenge that threatened your success?  What was it like for you when you overcame that challenge?  If you can, sit in that moment of triumph for a minute.

While I am sure this is not how you all envisioned your time at HSU would wrap up, this does not represent the entirety of your journey to receive a quality education.  As someone on campus that witnesses students overcoming difficult challenges first-hand every day, I know the importance of remembering the journey it took for you to reach this major success.  You all have acquired the skills to be outstanding whether you realize it or not, just through your resilience to overcome challenging situations like the current state we are in.  This will just be another moment you can reflect on in the future to remind yourself that you can be successful in the face of adversity.  We are proud of all of you and know that you are ready to take on whatever this world will throw at you.

From Tracy Smith, Director, Retention through Academic Mentoring Program (RAMP)

One of our mottos in RAMP is borrowed from colleagues who use it in HSU’s amazing Upward Bound program - “Flow Like Water….”. We say that to each other when the turbulence of life feels like it’s trying to take us under. If we can flow with that turbulence rather than fighting with it, if we can flow around the boulders and rocks rather than letting them stop our progress….sometimes it helps. The ability and decision to “Flow Like Water ” is empowered by holding tight to those we love and cherish, having the courage to ask for help, crying as much as we want, laughing as loud as we want, and reminding ourselves of our purpose, now and in the future. Class of 2020, I believe in your strength, your creativity, your courage and your perseverance. I invite you to flow like water and hold fast to those dreams….you will make them happen. 

Take extra good care.

From Janelle Adsit, Assistant Professor, English and Environmental Studies

You deserve a celebration. You completed a course of study, and you also sustained our campus in bringing yourselves here. I am grateful for what you did at HSU, for the ways you supported each other and for what you taught us as your faculty and staff.

That we aren’t gathered together on graduation day in the Redwood Bowl is one indication of the challenges you faced along the way—some fleeting, and some larger with timescales difficult to chart in the mind: Earthly timelines of climate change, crises of public health, legacies of continued oppressions suffered all over the globe. We feel that suffering, but there’s also joy today. This time is not one thing. This is a time of great uncertainty, but it is also a time in which we can celebrate what you’ve done here at HSU. You took on an education that will enable you to do what most needs to be done in this world.

In our classes, you spoke of the problems you most want to solve in your lifetime: reversing sea-level rise, enacting social justice, and repairing the social, economic, and ecological harms and damages done over centuries and continued in the hours of today. Going forward, you’ll be inventive and responsive as you take action. You’ll learn as you go. And as you do, I hope you’ll stay connected to each other. You’ve been through something significant together as the class of 2020, and you remain together. You’ll see each other through this time of change, and together you have the ability to bring about a transformation of the world. 

The word commencement comes from the Latin com, meaning "with, together," and the initiare, meaning "to initiate,” or initium, meaning "a going in.” While we may not have a traditional commencement event this year, you are together here in the moment of going in.

What does it mean to celebrate in this time? I think of Lucille Clifton’s poem that is titled with an invitation to celebrate: “Won’t you celebrate with me” is a poem that speaks to resilience and what it means to celebrate amid pain. In Clifton’s poem, she writes of herself as “both nonwhite and woman / what did i see to be except myself?” The poem reminds us of what it means to shape a life, and what it means to give language to who we are. We need all the languages that make us, to represent and be represented—and we need to meet each other in our difference with compassion and humility, to preserve each other’s dignity and participation against forces that dehumanize and degrade, to account for and disrupt the histories of injustice that continue today. 

Here we are today, in Clifton’s words, “on the bridge between / starshine and clay.” Here we are: our feet on the earth and our minds taking in the starshine scope of our future. I hope you’ll read Lucille Clifton’s poem and then write a poem of your own today. Won’t you celebrate with me and acknowledge this important moment.

Your campus community is celebrating you. We are celebrating who you are and what you’ve done here and all you’re going to do. 

From Deepti Chatti, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies Program; Energy, Technology, and Policy (ETaP); Faculty Research Associate at Schatz Energy Research Center

Can we radically re-imagine the world we live in, to address climate change, eradicate global inequalities, and lead more just and peaceful lives? Yes, we can. We can imagine a better world, because I have seen you do it. We have been doing it in all our classes: by disentangling how the contemporary world works, and by connecting social and environmental injustices. You have been doing it in concert with each other in your entire time in college. Global crises allow us to act on our radical imaginations. Things that seemed impossible before, now become possible, as the only sensible way forward out of this chaos. The coronavirus pandemic has thrown into sharp relief the crazy logics of “business as usual”. The crisis has shown us the underbelly of austerity, precarious labor rights, just-in-time supply chains, and healthcare provided as a luxury for those who do certain kinds of work. The way out of the crisis will be for us to re-evaluate, as a society, what we hold dear. It could allow us to re-imagine our relationship to the natural world. You will be an integral part of constructing a better world. Your imagination will help all of us do better next time.

Like you, I lost an opportunity to walk across a graduation stage this May, and have my family, friends, and faculty celebrate in my educational accomplishments. Our degrees may have different words on it, but we are tied together because we, and our loved ones, lost a milestone that we looked forward to for many years, that we collectively struggled for. I acutely feel your disappointment, as it is mine too. It is a strange time to be graduating. But I hope you will remind yourself that a commencement delayed due to an unprecedented global health crisis is just that – a commencement delayed. We will celebrate soon. Our loved ones will celebrate soon. And we will rejoice in our accomplishments, now and in the future again. Our accomplishments are real. And our work is just beginning. Let’s imagine a better world together. 

From John Meyer, Professor of Politics and Environmental Studies

One of the most inspiring things about Humboldt students in general and Environmental Studies students in particular is how many of you are motivated to create positive change in the world. But one of the biggest challenges for all of us is to develop strategies to make this work effective. We often have a sense that our political and economic systems are monolithic and stifle change. Yet at moments like this we are reminded of just how quickly previously unimaginable changes can be achieved! 

Don’t get me wrong -- I’m not suggesting that the social changes wrought by this virus are a good thing. And we need to honor the loss that we are all experiencing now. But I do believe that at moments like this -- when the standard rules of how politics and society work seem turned on their heads -- previously unimaginable changes become possible. With the skills, insights, and vision that you’ve cultivated with us here, I’m confident that you can help us all make the most of these possibilities. 

From Loren Collins, Faculty Support Coordinator for the Academic and Career Advising Center and the Center for Community Based Learning, Lecturer for Environmental Studies and Political Science 

I have told our last four Environmental Studies capstone cohorts that you all embody the very hope and meaning we want to see in so many ways. That statement is true of so many of the students I get to meet and work with.  In the face of the existential crisis inherent in climate change, racism, inequality, systems built on oppression, and so much more…  I found my hope in you, your generation and the passion that you bring to the table.  Now we need you more than ever.  

So many students graduating in normal circumstances across the nation, simply look to find jobs that they enjoy and that compensate them with a good living.  You are choosing to find jobs that allow you to change the world, to make a difference and it adds different elements, anxieties and strategies to what it means to move from college to career.  Those choices alone can feel difficult enough, but doing so in a crisis and while facing a long-term shelter in place order is a challenge I never even considered.  The anxiety you must face - I wish we could take it away…  

You cannot control what the state of economy will be and who is hiring now, as stressful as those questions can be. But what you can control, is who you are, how prepared you are to engage in this time, and how you connect with those that are making a difference and changing the world.  Your transition into your career and changing the world has not been derailed, it just became more complicated.  I have seen our graduates get amazing jobs in every economy since the recession, through thoughtful engagement, networking, and demonstrating WHO THEY ARE.  That you can control, and it is what matters the most in these times. And, you can control that you are not alone, we are a community and we are here to help you, love and will stand by you in this time.  You are the hope and we will hold you up! 

Environmental Studies Class of 2020, Humboldt State