No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength,” so said the 19th-century Prussian military commander Helmuth von Moltke the Elder.
For some, they will recognise a variation of this saying, reconfigured popularly to: “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy”.
One hundred and thirty years after his death, the quote by von Moltke may not only describe the journey of fresh graduates today, but perhaps also what the country has gone through in its fight against Covid-19.