Dear Incoming College Freshmen…

This isn’t how it was supposed to be. I get that.

Senior year of high school ended in the blink of an eye. You left school one day in March, confident you would return to the hallways in a few days, but home is where you remained. Your favorite class, sport, extracurricular activity and club became virtualized. Friends and teachers who mean the most to you were suddenly in tiny Zoom boxes or six feet apart. You watched—in complete awe and heartbreak—as weeks turned into months and rites of passage like prom and graduation slipped away.

You yelled, screamed, cried and cursed. You are mad. You are sad. You are scared.

We get it. We are, too.

But here’s what’s different about you.

In a few months, you have become a historic group of individuals—the last high school seniors before COVID and the first class of college freshmen during COVID. Sure, our hearts break for the 7th and 8th graders who never walked the stage at middle school graduation. The college seniors who never got to enjoy second semester senior year, internships, graduation, senior night, and so on. And all the classes in between who were just as deserving of their special moments.

But something feels different about you.

It feels like you got the one-two punch, with two of the most important moments of your life—senior year of high school and freshmen year of college—being knocked off course.

Many think you have drawn the shortest end of the stick.

You probably agree.

But what if that’s not the case?

What if you and your friends actually drew the longest end?

Hear me out…

Years from now, philosophers will come up with a catchy name for your class; you truly will become a generation of your own. We will talk about you for decades to come. In the beginning we will talk about what we fear you lost. The thrill of moving into your freshmen dorm, bouncing from room to room gabbing into the late hours of the morning. The feeling of jam-packed lecture halls with hundreds of peers. The reverberation of chants at basketball games. The joy of visiting your high school friends at their colleges, and then them coming to you.

Sorority and fraternity rush

Parents' Day

Late nights at the library

Sports

Clubs

Floor parties

The list goes on…

But as time goes on—and we witness your transformation firsthand—the conversation will shift to all that you gained.

You will have developed deep perspective on what is most important to you—a perspective that typically only comes in later adulthood. This perspective will shape your core ideology, allowing you to make decisions about your career, family and big life moments that are in complete alignment with your highest sense of self.

You will find your forever friends sooner than we did because COVID has taught you to not waste time befriending anyone who is not good to you.

You may even experience less heartbreak. Since dating will look different, you will do it right.

You will pave the way for remote learning, collaboration and teamwork. Your ability to absorb new information and produce topnotch work will challenge us to continue to evolve the business world. After all, we don’t stand a chance of recruiting and retaining you when you graduate if we haven’t mastered remote work, flexible hours, and work-life integration.

You will make time for your family. Unlike us—who lamented Christmas Break because it meant time away from college—you will be different. You have witnessed the uncertainty of life. You will redefine what it means to be a college coed while still having strong home roots.

You are going to be disruptors. Your world got completely upended. But you refuse to sit back and do nothing. Instead, you will be game changers.

You will be the leaders of tomorrow.

The ones who come into our businesses and blow everything up in the best way possible.

The ones who will lead with compassion, patience, passion, kindness and determination.

The ones we will turn to for advice on how to successfully navigate change.

The ones who will go down in history for making us all better.

So take some time to grieve what you have lost. Allow the feelings of pain, frustration, discomfort and sadness to wash over you. Enter college with both unbridled excitement and unease. But then remember that you can be the class who drew the right side of the stick. The class that will play a vital role in moving our society forward to something better. The class that can model the way to what comes to next.

You’ve got work to do. And we cannot think of a better class to take on the challenge.

Here’s to you, the Class of 2024!