{"id":70955,"date":"2021-05-22T02:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-22T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/you-can-do-hard-things-commencement-address-comes-together\/"},"modified":"2021-05-22T02:30:00","modified_gmt":"2021-05-22T10:30:00","slug":"you-can-do-hard-things-commencement-address-comes-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/you-can-do-hard-things-commencement-address-comes-together\/","title":{"rendered":"‘You can do hard things’: Commencement address comes together"},"content":{"rendered":"

Giving a commencement address is tricky in any year, but addressing the class of 2021 presents particular challenges as the world emerges from a year of pandemic-induced lockdowns and other life disruptions.<\/p>\n

University of Alaska President Pat Pitney said she was humbled when asked to address the Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé graduates as their keynote speaker at Sunday’s commencement.<\/p>\n

“If they were asking Pat Pitney, I could say no,” she said in a phone interview Friday morning. “But they are asking the president of the university, so I must.”<\/p>\n

Former governor selected to lead UAA<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n

Pitney said she is focusing her speech on how much life the graduates have ahead of them and the important lessons they’ve learned from the adversity caused by COVD-19.<\/p>\n

“In a lot of ways, the COVID year created these disruptions in day-to-day life, but it also narrowed the focus to what’s important,” she said. “Everyone spent more time with family and with key friends and realized how dependent they were on a smaller set of contacts.”<\/p>\n

She also sees a silver lining from the challenges of distance learning. She said that a lack of in-person classes forced students to be direct communicators and to seek out information—two skills that will leave them in good stead for the future.<\/p>\n

“Students had to be intentional. That skill, whether in college or on the job, is super-important,” she said.<\/p>\n

In addition, Pitney said that she would use her speech to encourage students to get comfortable with the concept of personal evolution as they embark on post-high school endeavors.<\/p>\n

“I want them to embrace the idea that you are going to be a different person five years from now and even different than that 10 years from there,” she said.<\/p>\n

TMHS boys basketball recognizes players with end of season awards<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n

Pitney said that part of her message will be that growth and challenge are essential parts of life and should not be avoided.<\/p>\n

“Hard things are hard, and you can do hard things,” she said.<\/p>\n

• Contact reporter Dana Zigmund at dana.zigmund@juneauempire.com or 907-308-4891.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UA President Pat Pitney said she was humbled to be selected. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":716,"featured_media":70956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[75,223],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-70955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-local-news","tag-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/716"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70955"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=70955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}