A Note From the Class of 2020 by Connor Hudson '16

Read the full article on Medium.com.

Article written by Connor Hudson, Salpointe Class of 2016, and University of Southern California Class of 2020.

"The most peculiar thing about being a part of the Class of 2020 is that while most people are experiencing life interrupted, we are experiencing a part of life skipped over. For all its romantic tendencies and fallacies, the American undergraduate experience is uniquely formulaic in a manner that a lot of life is not. As many people are stuck wondering what may have happened had life proceeded as intended during this period, the members of my graduating class, for the most part, know what these last few precious months should have been — the seminal end to our coming of age story. It is with this perspective and through my own experience that I try to articulate our current position in the world.

I am in a unique spot here, because while many of my fellow students, indeed some of my best friends, remain on campus, quarantining with their roommates, I have been forced to leave early and come home. On March 15th, I lost my mother following a 37-month battle with a rare form of cancer that, for better or for worse, framed the majority of my college experience. This drew me home to be a bulwark for my brother and sister, as my father has been in assisted living for over a year now, while we, like many others, try to formulate an answer to the looming question of: What comes next?
That has been its own special challenge, finding ways to move through and beyond grief while being isolated in our childhood home. If nothing else, it has shown me that the best way to proceed through difficulty is together, uniting under the unbreakable kinship of our collective humanity. This time has demonstrated that there is virtue in plainly seeing the uniqueness of each individual we encounter, and a necessity to acknowledge the slight, but indelible, imprints we leave as we pass through each other’s lives — as we never know how long we truly have with one another.

What this amalgamation of circumstance has led to is, rather than a senior spring filled with spending purposeful time with those you care about, showing them that the relationships formed between drunken nights and complaining between classes were, in fact, real, I have instead spent these months surrounded by the close embrace of family, cooking a variety of exotic dishes, perfecting the now gauche banana bread, and hosting a fake prom. While this has made it easy to take account of what is important in life — really important — it has also shown me the necessity of two things that college does an excellent job of drawing out of a young person in droves: the search for frivolity and the search for purpose.

College is undeniably a formative experience in the life of the modern American, and this extends from the frivolity that can be found there. It is a time ripe for experimentation and floating between intellectual interests, both high and low. If nothing else, college serves as a time to explore at a distance from true reality, which would be refreshing if only students knew how exceedingly rare and precious that space truly is. Only now, as I sit here at 2:30 in the morning, before the first of my last college finals, have I had the pause necessary to truly understand the precious nature of being able to unabashedly go through trial and error in the course of daily life. Only now, sitting at an unexplainable distance from what this period in my life was meant to be, can I truly understand that no time in my life will ever be again like it once was. More than anything, I wish I had gotten to say a knowing goodbye to the fragility of those moments in time. Now, as we all sit at home, I urge us to recognize and reconcile with the fragility of this unique moment. As we endure this pause, I implore us all to try to fill it with some new form of light and let the stories and creations of the world we knew — art, literature, film, music, history — inspire us in a way that we have never felt before. Use this new energy to fight against the morose nature of our current plight. Let this inspiration manifest into an appreciation of life, a reverence for the capacity of others, and a curiosity to continue exploring and creating our own meaning in life when we go back into the world.

With the frivolity — and fragility — of time noted, college also naturally forces a young mind to wrestle with the world at hand: Where do you fit in the world as it is? What do you believe the world ought to be? What can you accomplish to inch it, even incrementally, in that direction? As the world continues to sit in this moment of flux, I have seen friends have to juxtapose the stark dualities of the economic circumstances which were forecasted and those that are actual. In just a few short months, we have gone from the graduating class that was supposed to enter the hottest job market in 50 years, to one that may continue embattled with lows that surpass the Great Recession. With that being said, I would like to urge anyone reading this to consider the questions raised above, anew. For the first time in a long time, in the lives of many, we have had the unique opportunity to take a look at the world outside of the daily rat race. From this vantage point, I would like to challenge each of us to consider: Where do we fit in the world as it is? What do we believe the world ought to be? What can we accomplish to inch our society in the right direction? If we can come out of this moment with an appreciation and an ambition for the capacity of humanity, rather than a fear of an interconnected world, I believe we can chart a better course for us all.

The simultaneous enormity and simplicity of what I have had to say goodbye to is beyond measure. Many before me have had to do so, and I take solace in that fact, but no one has had to say goodbye quite like this. I know I am only one of many, but I believe I speak for the Class of 2020 when I say that we do not want nor need pity. We want a world that is ready and excited to move forward, embracing the opportunity to build a better world that is implicit within the uncertainty that the future certainly holds. I, for one, am enthralled to enter this next chapter of my life as unabashedly as the college student who entered his senior spring a few short months ago. Now more than ever, it is so important that we thoughtfully embrace the collective responsibility that we must each individually manifest, to not passively or meagerly tread back into life when the time is right. This world, with all its fundamental flaws, is ours to take ownership of.

Please do not interpret this as a meditation on despair. This is an ode to a peculiar hope, a hope that regardless of what our future holds, we may strive each day to fill it with vibrancy, uninhibited love, thoughtfulness, and a deference for the fleeting nature of each moment. To end, I would just like to say that the complex emotions of the Class of 2020 should not be reduced to sadness. We know that the world will be there waiting, filled with opportunities, challenges, pain, and joy, just as it was before. We will be ready to meet the world and to go out into it armed with a unique candor and vigor towards life. We will see you out there soon enough."

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