It's that time of year.

High school seniors across the country are filing into auditoriums and filling up gymnasiums

and football bleachers, all to celebrate their accomplishments, receive their diplomas,

and taken words of wisdom from their commencement speakers.

I just want to extend my personal congratulations to our graduating class.

This year there's a common thread.

Your last four years have been anything but normal.

The class of 2023 started high school before the pandemic and spent the end of their

freshman year and subsequent years navigating a new reality.

Graduation speakers this year celebrated their resilience like principal Rebecca Morrissey

of Topeka High School in Kansas.

You have persevered, surviving masks, remote and hybrid learning.

Or this one from salutatorian Victoria Louridan at Wellington High School in Palm Beach,

Florida.

At least we can one up our parents and stories are telling our kids, oh you climb mountains

and swim across the river to go to school.

I had to show up to school and it has Matt's suit and Dodge coughs and sneezes just to

take a math test in second period.

Our junior year was when things were expected to be back to normal, but they weren't.

Every time the classroom phone rang we anxiously waited to find out who was next to get sent

home due to contact tracing.

In Brooklyn Woodspeech at Stuart's Creek High School in Smyrna, Tennessee, the pandemic

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