This is for Hong Kong’s class of 2020. Graduates, be proud of all that you have achieved – surviving the last year was no small feat . It was an extraordinary year and especially challenging for you, the class of 2020. Not only did you have to begin your last school year in the middle of mass social unrest, you had to keep up with your studies even as everything around you spun out of control compounded by the onset of Covid-19. And now, having finished your classes and taken your exams, Hong Kong is facing a third wave of Covid-19. I’m sorry our circumstances could not afford you the pomp that goes with leaving school. But please know that whatever the results of your Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exams, which will be announced on July 22, no generation is better prepared that yours is to brave the new pandemic-ravaged new world. No one would have imagined that this is how your school days would end. Those familiar emotional scenes of classrooms filled with friends, who have known each other since primary school, waiting – in suspense and in support of one another – for the DSE results will not be repeated this year. There will be tearful farewells, but there will be no parties. There will be anxious times, but there will be no vacations. I bet you know well, by now, that parties and vacations are not entitlements. And neither is the air that we breathe and the hours that pass us by. Education does not give any of us entitlements – we have been gifted knowledge not so that we can be privileged. For the past year, we have seen the “old world” crumble beneath our feet. As far as human and technological achievements have come, we remain at risk to protein molecules that do not discriminate. Covid-19 simply does not care who you are, how much you earn, or whether you fly first class. The Bard is right: “All the glistens is not gold.” For too long, we have been taken in by shiny objects – material riches and social status – that we have got our priorities all wrong. We happily sustain the fast fashion industry that is contributing to the destruction of our planet and try to compensate by sipping on “feel-good” designer aluminium reusable straws. That’s life lived on fake sugar rushes. The new realities have robbed you of the sugarcoated version of life that has been handed out to graduates from years past. And you know more than those who have gone before you that life is not your oyster. It is also not to be frittered away. Life has purpose and meaning, and the tests of real life have no standard answers. And so I applaud you, not for taking the last year of unprecedented uncertainty and change in stride, but for fighting and struggling, for stumbling and soldiering on. In you now are the seeds of true grit, the power that will propel you forward in life despite adversities and failures. Every aspect of life has been redefined in 2020. It is no wonder former US president Barack Obama has called on the class of 2020 to “leave behind all the old ways of thinking ... and set the world on a different path”. Hong Kong’s IB top scorers drop by nearly a third under new grading system Throw out all the well-intended but shallow advice to “do your best”. Instead, be your best, and the doing will follow. Be your best, no matter the circumstances. Be on time when the rest of the world is running late. Be strong when people say there is no hope. Be kind when people who don’t know better hoard toilet paper for (false) security. Be grateful for what these times have afforded you – the ingredients to foster fortitude, cultivate compassion and see the world with clarity. And I wish you the best of luck. Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA