As this is the season of graduates, we'd like to extend our best wishes for the future to all who will be completing a phase of their education this June. The road ahead beckons, but we hope that you will pause for a moment and reflect on how far you've come on your journey, and appreciate those who have helped you get where you are.

Believe it or not, it's not the triumphs that you've had which are the most important moments -- it's the stumbles you've made, and then overcome. How you recover from a mistake and what you have learned from it will be far more important in the long run than the easy times.

If school has been easy so far, just wait. At some point you will fail a test, or a course, or mess up your credit rating or a relationship. Everyone does something stupid during their youth. But as painful as those moments are, they will teach you important lessons when you face up to your error, and learn how to achieve what you really want in spite of your mistake. It will feel awful for a while, but the strengths you can find inside yourself will be important for your whole life. By the time you're forty you might not remember calculus, but you will remember how you struggled and overcame it.

It's also important to realize who your true supporters are when you really need it. Your true friends and family will forgive mistakes, not only because they love you, but also because they too have messed up in the past. It's human. There's virtually nothing you can do wrong that can't be fixed.

Congratulations, graduates. Now go out there and make some mistakes!

Meg Morgan Norris

Publisher