6 | MAY 28 • 2020 Views C 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.”