Completing your final year of university is always hard. There’s capstones or theses (or whatever your program calls the big final project), plus regular classes, plus trying to squeeze in the last bit of college fun, plus preparing for a post-college future — whatever that looks like for each of you.
You managed to successfully do all that during a global pandemic. (You should definitely put that on your resumé.) Your final year in college probably looked nothing like you expected it to. But you adapted, you persevered and now you’ll walk away with a diploma in hand.
In case you haven’t heard it from someone yet, we’re proud of you. We’re proud of you if you got straight As or straight Cs (“Cs get degrees,” after all) or anything in between. We’re proud of you, no matter if you got that degree in four years or less or more than 10, because no matter how long you took, you still did it. So you should be proud of yourself, too.
As graduation approaches (and long after it has passed), people will offer you all sorts of unsolicited advice. Some of it will work for you; some of it won’t. But here are some words of wisdom we think apply to all of you equally:
Have faith in your own strength. You survived college during a pandemic and that took more strength than you probably knew you had. So have faith in your ability to get through the tough times and the disappointing ones, in your ability to work through or around challenges and in your ability to keep going even when you’re not sure you can.
All that’ s left to say is this: Congratulations, Class of 2021!
