6 | MAY 28 • 2020 

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ongratulations on 
your graduation! We 
at the Jewish News are 
so proud of all your amazing 
accomplishments and the 
terrific ways 
each and every 
one of you have 
contributed 
to the Metro 
Detroit Jewish 
community. We 
are honored to 
feature you in 
our annual Cap & Gown issue, 
and we hope this can provide 
a small moment of pride in the 
absence of our community’
s 
normal graduation festivities.
Obviously, this is not the way 
any of you wanted this year to 
go down. Given the complete 
shutdown of everything caused 
by COVID-19, and the general 
state of the world you are 
graduating into, this probably 
feels less like a triumphant 
victory and more like barely 
stumbling across the finish line, 
only to find a sheer drop ahead 
of you. 
There’
s no denying these are 

difficult times. Most of you 
were planning to go to college 
in the fall and are now unsure 
if you’
ll even be able to set foot 
on a campus by then. Others 
were planning to travel abroad, 
to Israel or elsewhere, and now 
you’
re not sure if you can even 
get on a plane. 
That crucial threshold of 
life, the moment when you 
are able to leave the nest and 
put all your accomplishments 
and ambitions to use as you 
blaze your own trail through 
the world, has been put on 
potentially indefinite hold.
Maybe your families have 
been forced to encounter the 
horrendous effects of COVID-
19 up front, either because 
someone close to you has 
contracted the illness, is a front-
line worker doing their part to 
fight it off, or has had their jobs 
and livelihoods disrupted or 
shattered as a result. For many 
of us, this is not only a time of 
uncertainty and inconvenience, 
but also of real fear.
But does any of this mean 
you’
re less deserving of the 

praise and promise that 
comes with every high school 
diploma? Absolutely not. And 
here’
s the thing: In spite of 
everything, we can still live. 
And we can still live with our 
Jewish values intact. 
As you go forward in life, 
you will find opportunities 
to fulfill the lessons of our 
ancestors: of tikkun olam, 
of tzedakah, of chesed and 
kehillah. Finding new ways 
to repair the world, to give 
to the less fortunate, to build 
a community even in these 
current, terrible circumstances 
when our communities seem 
so fragile. 
No matter the unfortunate 
way in which it unfolds, 
a graduation is still an 
empowering event. You’
re 
finding a path forward, 
and you’
re doing it with the 
strong foundations our Jewish 
community has given you. 
 Mazel tov and kol hakavod! 
May your journeys ahead bring 
you happiness, and may you 
help make the better world we 
all so desperately need. 

Editor’
s Note

To Our Grads…

Andrew Lapin

catch up. But what should she 
do first? There’
s so much to do: 
meal prep, dishes, laundry, check 
in on extended family, pay the 
bills, work, clean, check the news, 
change out of her pajamas, exer-
cise, which she’
s been promising 
herself she’
ll do as soon as she 
has the time. The choice is over-
whelming. The guilt is ever-pres-
ent.
So she does what any exhausted 
mom who puts her kids first all 
day does: Sinks into the couch, 
switches on something mindless 
and doesn’
t move for the next few 
hours. She’
ll try to convince her-
self to go to bed at regular inter-
vals, but it’
s just so nice and quiet 
now. No one is fighting, complain-
ing or calling “Moooommy!” The 
loudest thing is the Mom Guilt, 
ever-present, which she’
s trying to 
drown out with sips of wine and 
desperate proclamations of “I need 
this me time!”
And it’
s true, she does.
I keep thinking if normal life 
earns us regular hardworking 
moms one celebrated Mother’
s Day 
per year, this pandemic has got to 
be earning us at least a three-year 
vacation … whether we tackled 
the crafts or not. 

did tell people about my 
disabilities, no one put me down. 
Whenever we had to meet outside 
for group projects, and I 
told my group I didn’
t drive, they 
were accommodating. I had one 
group tell me I could FaceTime 
into the meeting. 
 My last semester at Oakland, 
when I took four classes, was 
definitely the hardest. I remember 
one day when I was typing up 
notes for an exam the next day, 
I suddenly broke down crying 
because I felt I wouldn’
t be ready. 
But when I passed my classes, I 
could breathe again. 
 About a week before gradu-

ation, I was able to take a tour 
where the ceremony would take 
place with a coordinator. She told 
me what to expect during gradu-
ation. On graduation night I was 
more excited than anxious, even 
when the bagpipes played loudly 
right next to me. 
 I’
d have to say it went a lot 
smoother than my graduation at 

MCC, where I forgot my name 
card in the waiting area and had 
to go back for it (making me 
last but not least in getting my 
degree). 
 Now out of college, I face one of 
the hardest challenges of my life 
— finding work. One of my 
professors told me there weren’
t 
many college teaching positions. 

He also mentioned how some 
previous history students work 
in the writing industry because 
they had to write so many papers. 
I really liked writing papers for 
classes, so I decided I’
d try to look 
for work either 
writing, editing or proofreading. 
 So far nothing has come to fru-
ition. Sometimes I wonder if 
it’
s because I have autism or 
because of my lack of experience. 
Either way, I’
m not giving 
up. 

William Dash is a writer who lives in 
Clinton Township. He’
s a member of 
Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Township.

Mom Guilt from page 5

Not Giving Up from page 5
“I’ve always felt that just because 
someone is given a diagnosis,
it does not mean they can’t go to 
college.”

