The Covid Kids Are Graduating

Here they come, lucky us

Photo by Julie Wallace, proud mom of Mallory Dunlap.

Many of us are crossing paths with new college graduates, lucky us. These are young adults like no recent graduates before them.  If I could wave a magic wand and make it happen, our hearts would soften at the sight of them, and we would bring our gentler selves to these encounters.

It's not that these young people are fragile. Far from it. They were tough because they had to be in a time of sacrifice and loss. The pandemic robbed them of all the high notes of high school. No proms or commencement crowds. No in-person gatherings in those final weeks of summer when high school graduates reminisce over the maps of their young lives before departing for uncharted futures.   

Instead, off they went, from the abyss of cancelled everything into immediate isolation from the people who were supposed to become their new best friends. The first months of college typically break worlds wide open to new experiences. Not for these kids. Their lives grew smaller, more contained, as most of them sheltered within the same four walls through a year of online learning.

At the height of the pandemic, I was teaching at Kent State from a Zoom screen in my home office. Like my peers at universities across the country, I was doing everything I could to give my students a college experience that, despite my best efforts, bore little resemblance to what they deserved.

This weighed on me. Going to college had changed my life, and all these years later that is still the promise of higher education. I tried to boost their spirits in any way I could, but I was a cheerleader for the losing team. I knew what my students were missing.

They worked so hard—for me, sure, but mostly for one another. Some administrators had discouraged our requiring students to turn on their Zoom cameras. Students hate that, we were told. I asked anyway and encouraged students to change their backgrounds and lighting if they felt self-conscious. This was how they would interview for internships and jobs, I explained, and I wanted them to be comfortable with the format. I also hoped to build whatever community we could.

They needed no convincing. They were all in. Cameras on, with attendance and participation at record highs. They were eager to show up for one another, hungry for a community they could call their own.   

A memory bubbles up: One student took both my classes in a single semester and joined us from the call center where he worked full-time to help support his family. He had to speak softly to participate, and whenever he turned on his microphone, I could see his classmates lean into their computers to better hear him and give him feedback.

Another moment, with a student who was not mine. Her name is Mallory Dunlap. That’s her mortar board in the photo at the top.

I first met Mallory in September 2021, ten months after she watched her father collapse and die from Covid. Lewis Dunlap had done everything he could to avoid the virus until he could be vaccinated. An encounter with one reckless colleague, and Lewis got Covid.

When his heart gave out, 17-year-old Mallory applied compressions on his chest as her mother, Julie Wallace, performed CPR until an EMS crew arrived. He was 51 when he died. He left behind Mallory’s little sister, Camille, too. For nearly two weeks after, Waldo, the family’s boxer, sat outside the closed bedroom door where Lewis had died, waiting for his beloved human to let him in.

I wrote about Mallory three years ago as a columnist for USA Today. As I mentioned in my first essay here for Hopefully Yours, some stories stay with you forever, and this is one of them.  

Mallory was determined to build the life her father had dreamed for her. She didn’t tend to mention to classmates that he had died, but when they found out, she hoped for the right question.

“I know that sounds intrusive, maybe, but I want them to ask how my dad died,” she told me. “It wasn’t his fault. My dad was a man who protects others. He did everything he could to stay safe and keep everyone around him safe, too. And then one person infected my dad. And now he’s gone.”

Mallory and Camille with their father and softball coach, Lewis Dunlap. Photo by Julie Wallace.

Last weekend, Mallory graduated from John Carroll University. She was a young woman on fire. Double major in three years, with lots of honors. In July, she leaves for a year of public service with City Year. When Mallory says she’s ready for the next big adventure, she means it. God, I’m happy for her.

So many kids lost loved ones during the pandemic. Like Mallory, they want to be brave, and that’s a good thing. It often takes a lot of guts to believe you’re entitled to joy.

During the pandemic, I required my students to keep weekly journals. I gave them writing prompts, and they responded. This helped me keep an eye on how they were doing and allowed me to gauge the progress in their writing. It also created a historical record for them.

Many of them were working in hourly wage jobs for employers all too willing to put them at risk. Students needed the money, so they kept clocking in. Their journals chronicled the comradery of the exploited. With encouragement, these often became reported columns for class.

Their journals were full of stories about the loved ones they had to protect from exposure. “I feel like a walking time bomb,” one of them said.

“I miss my grandfather so much,” a young man wrote, “but he has multiple pre-existing conditions. I am the most dangerous person in his life right now.”

“I call my mother every day,” wrote another student who worked in a restaurant and had moved into her aunt’s basement. “Every day she cries and says, ‘I want to hug you.’ But she has a weak heart and is on a lot of medications. She can’t get Covid, and my boss insists we remove our masks when customers complain about them.”

I wanted my students to remember these times, and who they were during them. We think we’ll never forget how we felt in times of crisis, but that is seldom true. We may be able to later recite the facts of events, the data of public milestones and private earthquakes. Our fears and anxieties, though, and all those small moments of courage and conquest, are too often forgotten.

It is human nature to pack away the worst once it is finally behind us, but it creeps up on us anyway. Having evidence of who we were when we barely had time to think about it helps us see just how amazing we were to survive. My students were brave and strong when they thought they couldn’t be, and I wanted them to remember this. These experiences will be part of them forever. It helps to be able to name them.

When students could finally attend class in person, they did so with their faces hidden by masks. At the end of that first semester, I told them I might not recognize them in the halls once masks were no longer required. “Please don’t be offended if I need to hear your name,” I said. “Introduce yourselves!”

In response, most of them included photos with their final submissions, and many of them were pictured with their pets. I was so moved by that parade of beautiful faces. It starts early, this desire to connect, this yearning to be seen.

Zhuoer Hui graduated from Denison University earlier this month.

I’m at Denison University now, where students are required to live on campus all four years. This helped build community during the pandemic, even as they were confined to their dorm rooms and large, outdoor spaces. Still, this was a lonely time for many of them. I know this because they have written about it, a lot.

I teach opinion writing, which is my favorite class. Knowing how to craft a reasoned opinion is a life skill, for yourself and for anyone you hope to champion. Helping my students lift their voices allows me to know them sooner. Every week, we discuss life’s biggest headlines and their deepest values. It is impossible to be in their company and not feel hopeful for the world. This is true even in this time of protest and unrest. Especially now.

I no longer require weekly journals from my students, but at semester’s end I asked each of them to write an essay titled, This Is Me Now.

I was transparent about my reasons. Most of their final work is revision, and I wanted to give them one more chance to write a fresh piece. I also wanted them to have a record of who they are, in this moment, after all they’ve endured.

“You will want to know this about yourself someday,” I told them. “You will want to be able to look back and know where you started.”

They smiled like tolerant caregivers, but no one protested or rolled their eyes. We had spent a lot of time together, and they knew what I was up to. They’re kind that way.

Recently, I’ve been rereading the collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s graduation speeches, If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? This passage from 1978 is traveling with me, I find:

“Life is going to be very tough again, just as soon as this is over. And the most useful thought we can hold when all hell cuts loose again is that we are not members of different generations…We are all so close to each other in time that we should think of ourselves as brothers and sisters….Whenever my children complain about the planet to me, I say, ‘Shut up! I just got here myself.’”

I wish more of my fellow boomers would think of young people this way. On that giant arc of history, we are barely hours apart. A minute ago, we were them, buoyed by the certainty that our lives had just begun. We know how briefly they get to feel this way.

I don’t want to envy their moment. Look at that tailwind.  This is me, thumb out, hitching a ride.