A Senior Challenge: Keep The Faith

By Jennifer Hanford

Jennifer Hanford

My message to the Class of 2020 at Wakefield Academy and everywhere else: Don’t lose heart.

As the mom of two senior girls at warnings, a travel ban, quarantines, Wakefield Academy in The Plains, and a school closures, doctors and nurses caring teacher at the school, I get what you’re going through. Your hearts are broken. You’ve lost Jennifer Hanford for highly-contagious patients without proper protection, daily doubling of the the last months of your senior year—the fun infected, rising death tolls, New York part when finally you could relax and bask in the glow City spiraling. This was real; this was happening. of being celebrated for years of hard work. Here in Fauquier County, we’re mostly on the

For the athletes, you won’t get to play the last season of sports. For the thespians, you won’t get to star in your final performance. For the scholars, these months were for advanced placement exams, defending your thesis, and shoring up final grades.

I also had plans. Family members from across the country were scheduled to come to graduation. A few months ago, my biggest worry was where to house so many guests, how many extra tickets to purchase for the special senior dinner, how to feed a group of twenty people for five straight nights.

These “problems” were secretly my joy. I couldn’t wait to have everyone here to see my girls receive their diplomas. I’d already penciled dinner menus, mentally moved beds from one room to another to make the accommodations perfect.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, came the virus. Conversations started slowly. Where’s Wuhan? Next: State Department warnings, a travel ban, quarantines, school closures, doctors and nurses caring for highly-contagious patients without proper protection, daily doubling of the infected, rising death tolls, New York City spiraling. This was real; this was happening.

Here in Fauquier County, we’re mostly on the periphery, and like most people, we’re working out best- and worst-case scenarios. If my girls’ school can pull off a graduation, then the senior year might have a happy ending. Conditional reasoning is how we pretend to have control over a situation, but we don’t.

Recently, I listened to Father Mike Schmitz, head of the Young Adult Ministry at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. He’s a young guy, a cool guy, a sensitive guy. He spoke about what it means to be discouraged. The word dis-couraged—at its etymology—means to be disheartened. In other words, to be discouraged is to lose heart. He said losing heart is worse than a broken heart. A broken heart we can handle; a lost heart we cannot.

Not losing heart means setting aside our intellectual capacities for conditional reasoning and instead believe that the future will provide. It means we believe we were built to withstand a broken heart so long as we don’t lose heart. We want this to be over, and now. We’re not used to being patient. We live in a fast-paced, results-driven society that never closes. Asking us to sit still for a very long period of time goes against the American ethos.

My girls might get a graduation in the middle of summer, maybe next fall, or they might not. Not losing heart means accepting whatever outcome we get with the knowledge that our happiness doesn’t hinge on a condition.

My girls were born only months after terrorists flew hijacked jets into the twin towers. I remember sitting in my obstetrician’s office only days after 9/11 for my six-month visit, and all my doctor, my husband and I could do was stare at each other in disbelief.

More than 18 years later, we’re faced with another bout of uncertainty. We don’t know how this situation will be resolved, but we surely know it will. So let’s not lose heart.

Jennifer Hanford teaches 11th grade literary criticism, British literature and AP British Literature and journalism at Wakefield Academy in The Plains.