A Penn State professor’s message to 2020 graduates amid the coronavirus pandemic

I’ve been teaching at Penn State for 35 years, and I’ve stayed in touch with probably close to a thousand students after they’ve graduated. Some lead fascinating lives, others struggle to find their place in the world, and most are somewhere in between. But not one of them has ever said that their life unfolded as they imagined it would when they left Penn State. By their own assessment, those who have thrived post-graduation are those who were able to reset and go with the changes that came at them and not insist on remaining on the path they imagined.

I could say a number of pithy and uplifting comments like, “You’ve got this” and “You’ll look back one day and feel proud of how you handled this challenge.” But those words don’t reflect how overwhelmed I’m feeling by what is happening in the world.

In my Race and Ethnic Relations class, I willingly point my attention toward the dark forces of inequality, injustice, indifference and violence. But I also like to laugh and tell jokes, and deep down I’m an optimist who is constantly pointing out that things are rarely as bad as they seem, that people are essentially good, and that we need to be wary of whatever it is in the human character that leads us to be enamored with things that foment fear. I’m fond of pointing out how some people are always going to draw our attention toward negativity and calamity, but those people are rarely our wisest and most thoughtful thinkers. Life is incredibly complicated, and if we want to fancy ourselves as “thinkers,” then we should never make the mistake of believing that we understand anything more than just a tiny sliver of our world.

Some students have heard me say that I never want to be that person who is warning that “the sky is falling.” I’ve made some grave (and dumb) predictions in the past. When I do say something bold, I hedge. On the second day of this semester in mid-January, I discussed the news about a coronavirus and said something to the effect of, “if this virus is what some people are thinking it is, then the world as we know it might be radically altered.” I didn’t give much thought to what could happen because I didn’t want to sound like a fool when my postulations didn’t come to fruition, so I emphasized “if” and “might.” I could never have predicted the gravity of the situation that we’re in now.

Yet here we are. The world as you know it might actually be the world as you knew it.

This doesn’t mean that you won’t ever be back on your college campus, gather with friends, graduate, have a career, become a parent, and do many of the things that you’ve dreamed. But what it does mean is that a distinct internal disturbance is disrupting our sense of who we are. I think this is simply an instinctive knowledge that the world has forever changed. It’s in me and in every student with whom I’ve spoken. Maybe it’s in all of us.

The social, environmental and economic systems that have been holding our lives together have been disrupted in ways that almost certainly mean they will never return to their old patterns.

Remembering my former students, you might do well to accept that most of the goals and expectations you had before COVID-19 are not viable in the world that’s coming at us. In other words, hit the reset button and do it now, before you leave college. It’s not that difficult once you realize that most of “your” goals came from others around you and were never actually your own. So if the experiences of my former students are worth considering, then you’re more likely to be psychologically, socially and economically better off down the road if you pay attention to what is now being asked of you and the opportunities that are now available to you, all things that you never anticipated nor would have chosen.

COVID-19 has already shown that our ability to survive and thrive probably means that all of us need to pay attention to the rest of the world because, what any student who has taken my class has heard me say many times, our futures are intertwined. At this point I will go out on a limb and confidently forecast that this will not change.