Students in the pivot-empty-stadium-online generation prepare to graduate

The clock didn’t care about COVID-19. Time marched forward at the same pace that it always has, and yet, the pandemic, which altered so much about our experiences, seemed to alter the fourth dimension.

Initially stuck in homes, we developed new routines, worked at kitchen tables or desks and spent considerably more time with family members and our pets throughout the day than anticipated.

graduation speakers and glance at their supportive families who are thrilled to mark the milestone, celebrate their achievement and come together, what will be going through the minds of these new graduates?

Some may reflect on the typical academic stresses and achievements that helped them earn their diploma. They will consider the hours spent on lab experiments, the latenight workouts at the gym before a big game, and the endless rehearsals for shows and performances. They may bask in the attention of friends they made from around the country or around the corner.

As the weeks and months of uncertainty caused by a pandemic that gripped the country for more than two years progressed, some students recognized that they would not have some opportunities, like studying abroad. They might have filled out forms, learned important words in a different language, and chosen classes carefully that they couldn’t take.

Student-athletes, actors and artists, many of whom worked hard for months or longer together, were on their own as fields and stands stood empty.

about lowered expectations and abridged syllabi, with American History classes designed to go to 2016 that stopped in 1945, at the end of World War II.

It will be up to students to fill those holes and to recognize the opportunities to become lifelong learners.

Indeed, as people search for a label for these graduates, perhaps the list will include the pivot generation, the empty stadium generation, and the virtual learning generation.

BY DANIEL DUNAIEF

For students, the pandemic altered opportunities and created challenges unseen for a century.

And yet, each year, as in this one for our daughter, the annual rite of passage of a graduation following an amalgam of typical and unique experiences awaits.

As these students march to “Pomp and Circumstance,” listen, or half-listen, to

They also might consider the parts they missed or the sudden change from their expected pathways.

Students, who were studying abroad, suddenly needed to return home as quickly as possible. They had to make sure they had their passports and visas, booked flights, and cleared out of rooms that might have just started to feel like home.

Others, like our daughter, raced back to their dorms from spring break, packed everything up and drove home.

These students may recognize, more than others, that plans may need to change in response to uncertainty caused by health concerns, storms or other issues.

Amid these disruptions and changes in routine, students and their families needed to pivot. They connected with friends online, entertained themselves at home, often on electronic devices, and tried to learn online.

Undoubtedly, they missed learning opportunities inside and outside the classroom. I heard from numerous students way to New York. someday.”

Historically, commencement speakers have exhorted graduates to embrace the opportunity to learn, to question the world around them and to seek out whatever they need.

After the pandemic adversely affected some of the students, perhaps some of them will learn and develop a stronger and more determined resilience, enabling them to keep their goals in sight even amid future uncertainties.

In the meantime, they and we can embrace the normalcy of a routine that allows them to watch the familiar clock as it slowly moves through the minutes of a commencement address.

Alimited series, “A Small Light,” now streaming on Hulu and on Disney+, tells of Miep Gies and her husband, Jan, the Dutch couple who risked their lives hiding the family of Otto Frank from the murderous Nazis during WWII. We know of them from his younger daughter, Anne Frank’s diary that she kept while in their “annex” above the Frank’s business in Amsterdam. This film marks what would have been Miep’s 114 birthday and relates the familiar story from a different perspective, that of Otto Frank’s courageous secretary and would-be savior.

While I have read “The Diary of Anne Frank,” and seen the play, I was riveted by an email I received from a friend, Steve North, who is both a broadcast journalist with CBS and a member by marriage of my extended family. He contacted me to urge that I watch the film, which I will as soon as I can figure out how to get onto Hulu. Meanwhile, I would like to reproduce an abridged version of what he wrote.

The dark-haired girl was Anne Frank, whose extraordinary diary, written in the years before her death at age 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, has made her the single most recognizable victim of the Holocaust.

BY LEAH S. DUNAIEF

In the first half of 1929, two baby girls were born to Jewish families living in and near Frankfurt, Germany. One, sweet and dark-haired, had an older sister; the other, a smiling redhead, was an only child. As they turned 4 years old, the safe worlds their parents had created for them began to crumble. Hitler had come to power, and life for every German Jew was rife with danger. The dark-haired girl’s father decided to flee the country with his wife and children to Amsterdam. Some time later, the red-haired child’s parents made the same decision, eventually making their

The red-haired girl is my mother, Brunhilde Bachenheimer, and when I climbed the narrow stairs to Anne Frank’s hiding place 35 years ago, I was overcome with the realization that my own family had so narrowly escaped a similar fate.

On a return trip to Amsterdam in 1998, I felt an intense need to connect with Anne’s life and story on a deeper level. I wrote a note to Miep Gies, who had become an employee and friend of Anne’s father, Otto, in 1933. Back then, Miep took an immediate liking to the vivacious and intelligent Anne, thinking, “This is the kind of child I’d like to have

DIRECTOR

Beth Heller Mason

PRODUCTION

Janet Fortuna

Sharon Nicholson

CLASSIFIEDS DIRECTOR & SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER

Sheila Murray

BUSINESS MANAGER

Sandi Gross

In 1942, the brutal oppression of Dutch Jews by the Nazi occupiers of Holland escalated, with an increase in deportations. After Anne’s sister was ordered sent to Germany, Otto Frank approached his loyal bookkeeper and asked if she and her husband, Jan, would be willing to risk their lives by hiding the Franks and four other Jews. Miep’s immediate reply: “Of course.”

The rest of the overall story is well-known. Miep found and hid the diary until she could give it to Anne’s grieving father, the only survivor of the eight hidden Jews. Steve connected with Miep some 50 years after the war and, delighted to have met her, wrote his interview shortly before she died.

While I have yet to see the drama, which has received excellent reviews, it surely poses the question to the viewers: What would you have done?

CIRCULATION & LEGALS

MANAGER

Courtney Biondo

INTERNET STRATEGY DIRECTOR

Rob Alfano

SPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGER

Kathryn Mandracchia