Graduates: Don’t Forget to Come Back Home!

22 May Graduates: Don’t Forget to Come Back Home!

It’s graduation!  An exciting time to see and hear our high school and college graduates finalize their studies and begin to pursue a variety of paths to the future.  Over the past few weeks I have been reflecting on my upbringing and the pivotal points that led me to where I’m at today.  It’s interesting to look back and see how that path twisted and turned in more ways than I could ever have imagined would lead me to where I’m at today.

I’ve got to start with a throw back to the graduation songs we loved at the time… “Graduation” by Vitamin C and “Everybody’s Free” by Baz Luhrmann. Although I wasn’t in the Class of 99, we definitely LOVED that song and took many of his recommendations to heart. We were prepared to conquer the world at 17-18 years old (or so we thought)!

Iowa State University Foundation kindly reminded me this week that 2019 marks my 10 AND 15 year graduations from their fine university! Oh boy!!! I’m getting old!

There’s no hiding the fact that “Yes, I’m a millennial,” and with that has come many stereotypes that our generation has had to fight since day one! We are the ones who had to figure out technology on our own from the DOS screen of death. We are the ones who participated in DARE, BookIt, Up With People, and other programs to help encourage us to be better people. We are the ones who received a ribbon/trophy just for participating in ANYTHING. Our parents wanted better for us than what they had growing up.

We were the ones who couldn’t wait to graduate, get out of our small towns, learn to discover life on our own and pursue experiences far from home.  While that’s fine and we are who we are, I don’t recall anyone ever saying to us… “After you get your education and your fill of worldly experiences, we hope you’ll come back home! We need you and we value you!” Unfortunately, we were the ones who started the brain drain in rural America. We left our small towns in droves and many have been struggling ever since to regain population.

My situation isn’t any different than most others. It’s nothing that my parents or my teachers or community did wrong. It was just the outlook at the time.  Our communities wanted us to have better lives than what they had. They knew the ‘world was flat’ and for the first time in history they knew our generation could do whatever, go wherever and be whatever we wanted.

What an absolutely incredible time to live! And so we did. We got our degrees, we pursued our dreams, traveled the world, and worked our way up the corporate ladders. But as we started to settle down and have kids, reaching ceilings within our workplaces, we started to realize that there was more to life than all of these experiences.  It was more about being part of a community, making a difference for our neighbors and society, and realizing that we have the power and obligation to change our world.

And now I find myself here, back in rural Iowa, building a life for our children that I wouldn’t want any other way. My children have the opportunity to build close friendships, make a difference in their community at 4, 7, and 10 years old, be challenged in their school, and participate in a multitude of athletic and creative experiences.

All too soon, they will also be encouraged to fly.  We hope they will pursue their wildest dreams, travel to the ends of the earth, and know that their possibilities have no bounds.  But we will also make sure to remind them where they’ve come from and to never take that for granted.

For those of you who are graduating, or have just graduated, we hope you’ll realize the impact you’ve already made in your community. We hope you’ll go out and get an education (whatever that may look like), experience the world, and understand other cultures and find new ways of doing things.

Then we hope you’ll come back home.  The American dream starts right here in Iowa’s small towns.

Your community values you and we hope you’ll continue to pave the runway for others to take flight.