Uncertainty and the Class of 2020

My warmest congratulations to the Class of 2020.

Except that this year, it’s strikingly different.

No toga-clad students lining school lobbies. No crowds sweating and cheering in anticipation at the sight of the new graduates. No heavy traffic from schools to restaurants for family celebrations. The halls are hollow and the stages are bare.

As a student, I miss the rites. As an educator, I look forward to when graduation ceremonies can be held again. When that will be, however, is uncertain.

I thought I’ve lived quite long enough to know a great deal about uncertainty.

The year I graduated from high school, the world was still in the shadows of a global recession, where even the most stable of financial establishments had collapsed.

An unchecked credit system that fed plenty of dreams was exposed as a farce, and people packed up their things and vacated their homes and offices.

Once upon a time, people relied on express lanes toward a life of job stability and images of white-picket fences. Now, the whole of humanity is fighting a common but unseen enemy.

Globally, we have stalled, and have isolated ourselves to save our own and other people’s lives.

Consequently, poverty has reared its ugly head and even the mightiest corporations have had to cut down their workforce. Economic activity and public health are both teetering on the edge.

This atmosphere of agitation has created a new normal that is less than ideal for living and working. And the end of this crisis has no definitive date.

Uncertainty was always a reality we barely recognized. Now, it seems, uncertainty has transformed itself into a profound threat.

How deeply uncertain have the times become? And what kind of society will greet the youth encountering these times?

In an article for the March 2020 issue of Finance & Development, the flagship magazine of the International Monetary Fund, researchers Hites Ahir, Nicholas Bloom, and Davide Furceri introduced the World Uncertainty Index (WUI), a new quarterly measurement of uncertainty.

The index covers 143 countries and was derived by counting the number of times “uncertainty” (and other similar words) were mentioned in the country reports from the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The WUI provided a staggering body of data from the last 60 years. The result shows that after 2012, global uncertainty has been increasing.

In a graphical representation, the WUI looks like a person’s lifeline with ups and downs. But its tail-end, approximately representing the years 2019 onward, is steeply ascending.

Uncertainties come in various circumstances and could mean differently to many people. For the young, uncertainty is starting the year with plans and not knowing what to do next.

It means feeling robbed of milestones and successes, such as a school graduation. It means having dreams and now seeing them forced into a different timeline and appraised in a different light. These feelings are valid. They don’t make uncertainty any less real.

To the Class of 2020, congratulations on your victory, and welcome to your uncertainty. This period should have painted swatches of opportunity for you.

It may not feel like it right now, but, on the other hand, this is your opportunity to stand tall in a crisis, find your mettle in unprecedented terrain, and prepare to greet the end of the tunnel with the same fervor and desire.

But most of all, this is your opportunity to begin new lives of humility and selflessness and solidarity, in a world that had convinced itself these values were no longer needed.

Ground yourselves on something that your peers and colleagues can be certain of—your principles and values. In your good hands, the world’s uncertainties may still be alleviated.

“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is,” says writer John Allen Paulos. “And knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.”

[email protected]