Here we are. After what has seemed like an entirely separate four years in quarantine, we can finally say that we made it to the end. The end of the high school careers that so many of us put so much time and effort into. We have spent our entire lives watching as the world goes by us, seeing the choices made by the people who came before us affect our lives for better or worse. And, now, it is time for us to announce to the world that we have arrived. Perhaps even more importantly, it’s time we make sure that the world knows that we have been paying attention. We’ve payed attention to the good, we’ve payed attention to the bad, and we have something to say about it.

It seems as though with each day we are faced with a new challenge, testing us to see what exactly we are willing to do about it. Today, it may just feel like a burden for us. We may want to ask ourselves “Why do we have to go through this?” or “Why couldn’t this happen any other year?” But soon, we may realize that this was actually something that benefited us in the long run because true greatness never came out of anything easy. We come from different circumstances, different memories, different experiences, and maybe different is what the world needs right now.

Different perspectives allows us as a collective unit to see things that one perspective may have missed and, as we say goodbye to our childhood, it’s important for us to realize that it does not mean we should say goodbye to the perspective of a child. Our childlike creativity can be far more useful to us than anything we may have learned with age and even as we look to become more mature, we should make it our mission to keep the childlike innocence that so many people throw away.

Throughout this year I found myself writing articles about a variety of topics all with their own unique circumstances. Yet, strangely enough, each of these articles all share a similar message –the need for change. We shouldn’t have to go into the adult world and accept things for what they are just because they have been that way for an extended period of time. We shouldn’t have to keep quiet when we think something isn’t right in fear of saying something the crowd doesn’t want to hear. We all have the collective right to question anything we want to question, a right that we should never forget and that right to be able to think separately from the masses is what makes us different than anyone else.

It’s these differences that will end up defining our generation forever. It’s easy to see our circumstance as unfair or unlucky. But I can’t think of a year more fitting for what our class is all about. We are resilient in the face of chaos, loud when told to be silent, and much like our lives these past few months, this class is far from business as usual. With each passing moment our future progressively becomes our present, a present that will be defined by our unrivaled dedication and our unwillingness to stand down. So, to the Class of 2020, keep being stubborn, keep being different, keep being yourselves, because we may very well be the exact change the world needs.