2022 Graduation Magazine

CLASS OF 2022 LINCOLN DAILY NEWS.COM MAY / JUNE 2022 Page 75 is a volunteer in many community service organizations and youth groups. Gunderson was the 2021 recipient of the Abraham Lincoln Civic Engagement Award and became the Student Laureate of the Lincoln Academy of Illinois. Gunderson said she was honored to have been chosen to address the graduating class on this historical day at the college. She had written her speech long before the announcement of the closure of the college, but even so, she felt it applied especially well to the current circumstance. To start, she did not believe in “Everything happens for a reason” and even found the phrase irritating. At the same time, she said, it was circumstances that led her to the stage on Saturday. Gunderson said she had begun her college career, worked hard on her course work while holding down a full time job. She was in her senior year when she learned that she would not be able to finish her bachelor’s and be employed in a full time position at the same time. The job would interfere with the necessary degree requirements. She decided to ‘take a short break’ while she re-assessed her plan. That short break turned into 10 years. The break in Gunderson’s education really had not been all that worrisome. She had a good job with benefits, was content with where she was in life and what she was doing. But then, after nine years, the company she worked for let her and 83 other employees go as they went through a “downsizing.” Gunderson said, “I was devastated and did not want to hear ‘everything happens for a reason.’ But you see, if that rug had not been ripped out from underneath me, I would probably still be very comfortable continuing down a path that was not my dream.” She said, had she not gone through that devastation she would not have had the where- with-all to look at herself more closely and make the decisions she needed to make to Continue 8