Challenge

Before I spoke today, I really did give you, the Class of 2020, serious thought. And I am honestly stunned by what you have endured in your short lives.

You have grown up with mass shootings and school lockdowns. Horror is completely absent from my childhood. You have now witnessed two economic meltdowns of stunning proportions.

You are actually living in a hotter and more treacherous biosphere than the onw I was born into.

Two months into your freshman year, many of you voted for the first time in the 2016 election, and ever since, you have been living in the most polarized United States since the Civil War.

Now this you know all too well. You have been handed more than your share.

You have been challenged your entire lives, and you have demonstrated one of the most precious qualities one can have. Resilience. Now cynics like to mock the supposedly spoiled or callow youth of the new millennia.But you have seen and survied so much. And you have responded with wit, creativity, righteous anger, activism, and a gritty determination to take the reality you have been handed and make it better.

As the father of two teenage children, I look at all you have achieved in a frightful world, and it gives me great hope.

You are remarkable examples to my children of how to be smart, brave, and yes, resilient in a scary world.

So today is unusual in two respects.

First, as I have said, we are strangely separate on a day that's supposed to embody community.

Second, and more important, today is unusual because at this commencement, you commence nothing.

What I can offer is my boundless admiration, my deepest respect, my gratitude for working so hard, and bringing such honor to your families, your faculty, and your alumni.

Our current troubles will pass, and you will laugh and thrive and experience great joy. I cannot wait to see what you fine people will accomplish.