I didn’t mean for this Substack to go complete dark for as long as it has, but what with one thing and another (administrative work, teaching, a writing commitment, and personal health) I didn’t have capacity to write here for a while. Which, as it turned out, spanned the whole end of the academic year, and the graduation of yet another class of majors.
Having been in academia for a very long time— this was my 22nd year at Union— there’s a sense in which every graduation is both totally routine and utterly unique. The ceremony itself is quite deliberately constructed to give a sense of continuity and ritual, but at the same time, the highlighted speakers are different each year, and reflect the individual experiences of that year’s class. This year’s commencement leaned much more “utterly unique” than most.
I missed the speakers this year— I spent the weekend leading up to the ceremony over in Williamstown marking the 30th anniversary of my own college graduation by pretending to be 20 for three nights (which partly accounts for the delay in writing about graduation), and drove back over The Mountains just in time for the reading of names and distribution of diplomas— so I don’t know exactly what was said. I do know, however, that this class’s college experience was sui generis to a degree that hasn’t been seen in decades. They were first-year students when the Covid pandemic hit, so they spent the Spring term taking classes that had been hastily shifted to a completely online format. Then their sophomore year was a weird hybrid thing, with low-density classes and regular mandatory testing, and then vaccine and booster requirements and all the associated noise and chaos. Even as juniors, everything was still significantly disrupted, with a lot of signature college experiences only slowly rebooting to something like the 2019 normal.
I want to say again, because I don’t think we say it enough, that I am endlessly impressed by the tenacity and grace with which this group of students handled… [vague expansive gesture] All This. When the college announced plans to re-open in September 2020, there were a lot of naysayers on the faculty who declared the idea to be misbegotten from the start, that our students were not remotely disciplined enough to take the necessary precautions. The more hyperbolic of these claims predicted we would have metaphorical blood on our collective hands.
These students— and their fellows in the classes above and below them— exceeded even my relatively optimistic expectations. Were they perfectly compliant with the most stringent of the public health recommendations? No, of course not; nobody was. They did a great job, though, on the whole, fighting through the disruptions and restrictions and letting us stay open for business all the way through. We should acknowledge and celebrate that achievement, because you’ve got to go back well before even my antediluvian education to find another class that persevered through comparable hardship.
So, while I always say something along the lines of “I’m sure these graduates will find success in whatever they choose to pursue in the future,” I’m more certain than ever of that. Because they’ve already done something remarkable by just making it through the last four years with their sanity relatively intact.
So, congratulations to Jason, TY, Mel, Miles, and Aqeel, and Travis and Arno who didn’t make the photo above, the Class of 2023 for Union Physics and Astronomy. And to all of your fellows in all our various majors. I can’t say often enough how impressed I am with your cohort of students, and I wish you all the best in your future careers.
(And, you know, if any of you manage to make a trillion dollars, I hope you will remember us warmly…)
This is considerably sappier than the median post here, but if you want more, here’s a button:
And if you feel so moved, the comments will be open: