May 11, 2021
WESTERVILLE, Ohio (AP) — After she was picked as commencement speaker for fellow 2020 graduates at Otterbein University, Katie Exline considered focusing her speech on perspective. By the time she finally got to deliver it in front of them this month, they already had some of that.
“I don’t need to tell you all about the incredible things we are going to do or the ways that we will grow during our careers, because we have already started that process,” Exline, fresh off her first year of optometry studies at another university, said during the socially distanced ceremony at the small Ohio school. “This past year has been filled with uncertainties and situations far beyond anything I would have even dreamed of writing in a speech for the spring of 2020.”