The Graduation Situation and the Resulting Mental Taxation

I witnessed some terrible things on social media regarding the graduation situation, and they really did not sit well with me.

In the midst of our world’s coronavirus meltdown, my school decided that the class of 2020’s graduation would be in a virtual format, featuring videos submitted by students as well as recorded musical performances, speeches, and moments from our class officers. On the Instagram post with pictures of this group recording close to our school, chaos ensued in the comments section as people aggressively took sides on the debate of whether or not this was the right decision. It got so bad that the teacher running the account had to disable comments to stop any further hatred from spreading.

In this modern age of absurdly polarized politics and opinions, everyone has their own idea of what is right on an issue. It’s impossible to avoid, absolutely. But what isn’t impossible to avoid? Respecting your peers and your elders, and treating other people with kindness, especially when we are so emotionally fragile. No matter your background, I’m sure you’ve heard of the Golden Rule: treat others the way you want to be treated. Would you want someone to rip you to shreds in an Instagram or Facebook comment or condescend you in a Tweet? Didn’t think so.

To begin: my personal opinion on the issue of virtual graduation. Not gonna lie, I’m not happy with it. I’ve been a hardworking student for my entire school career, so this final culmination of my and my peers’ achievements feels very lackluster and underwhelming. I’ll admit, I’ve been absolutely devastated time and again when the flipping coronavirus robbed me of so many important milestones of my senior year: the spring musical, prom, and now graduation. While I’m certainly not happy about the way things turned out, this result could’ve been predicted based on the path things were taking earlier in quarantine (said earlier cancellations). To be honest, it feels like a cop-out. However, I would never take my sadness and anger to social media and insult the administrators who made this decision; they did what they thought was best, even if I don’t agree. And it is out of my locus of control, so being hateful and putting others down won’t do anything to change it.

I believe I stand close to the middle of the spectrum I witnessed. We are absolutely allowed to be sad and angry and to grieve what we’ve lost this year! That’s perfectly normal! But what we shouldn’t do is be immature and insult our classmates because their opinions differ from ours.

One opinion I saw posted in the comments section was the attitude of entitlement and brattiness. People were commenting, asking why the group of 20 or so people in the photos (who are the class officers and the chosen speakers and singers) got to have a “real ceremony” while the rest of us didn’t. They wanted to play the victim, even though we have all lost a significant part of our lives to a stupid virus. They were taking it, as one person who disagreed with them tweeted, as a “personal attack”. What these kids didn’t consider was that they were not properly understanding the context. Those present were not specially selected to have a private ceremony while excluding the rest of the class; they were filming segments that are traditionally part of a graduation ceremony in order to make this video as special as possible.

On the other hand, I also saw a horrible amount of hateful, condescending comments directed at the first group. These commenters disrespected the others by putting them down for their opinions. They were forceful in saying that the school certainly made the right decision to switch to online instead of postponing the in-person ceremony. They basically had the sort of snooty, holier-than-thou attitude that said, “You do what you want--I can’t stop you--but I’ll be over here following the rules and being a good citizen.” News flash: not everyone shares your opinion! On the one hand, we do have a large graduating class, so I can kind of see why a virtual graduation was favored, but on the other hand, literally no one can see the future. We don’t know what’s going to happen in June or July or even next week, so why make a decision so far in advance based on some whimsical, foggy idea of future horrors? Because you heard it on the news? I personally find it difficult to believe that the media or the government as a whole has its people’s best interests at heart. Money and power corrupt people, so who can we truly trust to tell us what to do? Everyone has some sort of bias, so the truth is very hard to filter out through all the noise. Even so, there was absolutely no need for the disrespect and the accusations of selfishness that came out of the Instagram comments and Twitter posts that I saw.

Is it selfish to grieve and be upset over something we lost? Absolutely not. We spent 13 years of grade school expecting this big, ceremonious day, so we were not really prepared to have that taken away and substituted with a virtual version. Even if you’re expecting that sort of thing, you can’t prepare for the feeling of defeat when yet another thing you’ve looked forward to is lost. And I won’t disagree that some people probably took their emotional reaction too far, but there is no excuse for this sort of toxicity on social media channels.

And it’s not just the affected teens who are picking fights! The same thing is happening in the parent group on Facebook. What kind of example are you setting for your children if you’re fighting with other parents over something you can’t control via Facebook? I have seen only a brief glimpse of this (as I am not my own mother) from my mom, but it’s the same sort of thing: parents who believe that the school made the right choice are being condescending, rude, and downright hateful to parents who expressed a desire for a better solution. The school claimed it would be “memorable”, which I’m not sure I can really agree with. Needless to say, I will be one of those people who attends my college graduation.

When I saw everything that people were saying, it hurt. Not because it was a personal attack, but because my heart hurt for the world. We should be grieving and coping together (even if we can’t physically be together), but instead we are fighting over who is right and who is wrong. A friend of mine said he lost a few Instagram followers because he posted a video backing up comments he had left on the post. Personally, I found my opinions of people I considered friends--or at least friendly acquaintances--being negatively altered because of the attitudes and the tones they expressed in their words. Friendships should not break up over this sort of thing! We are all adults, or at least close to it, so please act like it (some adults could probably take this advice too)! The experience was very taxing on my brain, like a pressure was building, and I considered deleting all social media for a few days to detox. No amount of pounding my head against the wall would’ve made a difference.

So what is all of this rambling coming to? Well, I’d just like to remind everyone of a few key principles in life: think before you speak (or post), handle problems and disagreements with maturity and grace, and be kind to other people. Please. You’re allowed to have your opinion, but don’t tell me mine is wrong. I will show you the same courtesy.

It feels like we’re living on a sucky and unpredictable roller coaster right now, and no matter how much we want to, we can't get off; please don’t make it worse by being mean.

A song that seemed pretty relevant can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD1XmvnTCyI.