Tuesday, April 30, 2024
The Class of 2024
For a lot of college graduates, the events coming up in the next month will their first real graduation. They were the students of the high school class of 2020, the ones who got no prom, whose spring sports were cancelled, and whose "graduations" involved watching a ceremony on TV or in a car at a drive-in movie theater or getting a diploma from a bus circling the neighborhood.
At some schools, those graduations are imperiled by protests, and in others there are various and sundry dangers threatening the normal. The class of 2024 enters the world at a weird time-- a time of upheaval and conflict in our country, of a historic political division, and an economy that favors everyone else over them as generational wealth pools up among older people and job prospects dim compared to the last few years.
But, still...
This is an accomplishment. And, frankly, every other era had its challenges. I graduated from William and Mary in 1985, and the economy wasn't great (especially in Detroit). The protests then were over the apartheid regime in South Africa. Yet it was a special time, scary and thrilling and bittersweet, the way it is supposed to be. And how it will be for you all, finally.
