You’d never know from all the happy faces at commencement on Saturday how anxious the Class of 2025 is. I know because all 19 students in my Editorial, Opinion and Commentary class were graduating seniors and almost all of them wrote about the things that are freaking them out.
Back in the days of newsrooms, hard-boiled editors rolled their eyes at “navel-gazing” columns, but I was moved by my students’ willingness to go public with their innermost thoughts – or at least share them with me.
Here’s some of what was weighing on them during their last semester of college and the first 100 days of Trump 2.0:
From a student who wasn’t born in the United States:
I am scared to tell people where I’m from. I’m scared to go on domestic flights. I’m scared that if I go on an international flight that I won’t be let back into the U.S.
From a student whose father recently moved her grandmother into a nursing home:
While my dad would be more content living in a shack in the woods when he grows old, his experience with his mother has opened his eyes to the burden that has been left on him –– that he doesn’t want to leave on my siblings and me… But I can tell he is becoming more open to accepting care when he is older…It brings up questions like how do we take care of our parents? How do we make sure they will be OK?
From a student who has been writing opinion pieces for a student publication and saw the footage of the kidnapping of Rumeysa Ozturk for the “crime” of co-authoring an opinion piece in support of the people of Gaza in the Tufts University student paper (Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student, was released last weekend after six weeks in federal custody):
I stared at my screen in disbelief. I felt my heart sink into my stomach. I feared for Ozturk, but, selfishly, I feared for myself. I’m not an international student. I’m a citizen. But how long until Trump starts removing citizens from the streets? I only write for a student newspaper, but so did Ozturk…It was the first time I felt real fear for my safety. I was beyond terrified.
From a student struggling with self-doubt:
You’re out for dinner with your friends, and they tell you something you have been avoiding – something you didn’t want to hear, something you knew deep down – and all of a sudden, it feels like the ceiling has crashed down on you. They said it in passing, something so casual, so cruel. They didn’t think it was cruel – in fact, if someone were to walk by the conversation, they would think little of it. To you, though, to you it shattered you.
From students contemplating life after Penn State:
- I feel like if I wait it out long enough either 1) I won’t need to get a job because, duh, I’m a woman and we’re best suited for childbearing and raising (“The Handmaid’s Tale” route); 2) A world war will ensue, either making me a refugee or Rosie the Riveter; or 3) A string of natural disasters will wipe us all out before either of the former can take place.
- I used to dream of moving out of my childhood home soon after finding a job and heading south to a warmer climate. This dream does not seem realistic anymore. One cannot move out of their parent’s house without a job to pay for a roof over their head… Needless to say, I am terrified of life post-graduation.
- People say that the four years you spend in college prepares you for the real world and guides you into becoming an adult. As I sit at my desk writing this today, I feel like the same kid that got sent to the principal’s office in middle school for cursing too loudly.
In school, you can get away with not knowing how to do things like budgeting, scheduling doctor’s appointments, or understanding your insurance policy…But after graduation, those safety nets slowly disappear. You’re expected to know how to file your taxes, pay bills, cook something other than pasta, and all the little things my parents took care of. But it’s all on me now. The training wheels have to come off.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom. There were odes to Dear Old State and eagerness for life’s next adventure. But I felt like some sort of pep talk was called for.
The best I could do was tell my seniors that things change fast in the U.S.A. (the same country that elected Barack Obama in 2008 elected Donald Trump in 2016). Don’t like the weather in America? Wait five minutes…
I doubt anyone was reassured. But we made wishes, blew out candles and ate cupcakes.
“See you at commencement,” I said.
I saw them. They looked happy.
