For many students, the past year has been disrupted by COVID-19. As a senior, the year has been disappointing in many ways, but also greatly changed my outlook on life in general.
Starting in March of 2020, schools shut down due to COVID-19 and students everywhere began to wonder what this would mean for upcoming months. I remember feeling grateful to be a junior, feeling immensely pitiful for the 2020 seniors who lost the last two months of their senior year, their second prom, and did not have a normal graduation. Missing my friends and some of the simple parts of normal life, I was hopeful to return to “normal” once summer came. At the time, I recall hearing another teenager say they thought COVID-19 would take away the prom for seniors in 2021 and fearfully turned to my parents for reassurance. They assured me that that was ridiculous, and surely everything would be over within a year. Little did I know that in a few more months, I would be feeling the same level of pity for myself and my peers that I felt for those 2020 seniors.
Losing many of the key high school events for seniors has been devastating for many, including myself. Looking back I do not remember every moment of all my old homecoming dances, football games or pep rallies, but it is nice to know that I was there and that I had the experience. Though Freedom High school seniors may look back in 20 years and laugh at how heartbroken they were over losing their prom or last football game, it is important to understand that many students feel robbed of memories that every senior class before them had. Despite the fact that high school is a small part of life compared to all the things we seniors will experience, losing experiences that have been looked forward to for years is a big disappointment to have to deal with.
For me, it has been difficult to deal with some of this disappointment, and I have learned many lessons in the past year. It would be easy for me to constantly look back on all of the things I missed and feel sorry for myself, but that wouldn’t change anything. I have learned to make the best of my year, whether that be doing smaller events with my friends, coming in when I can for hybrid classes, and continuing to take part in an after school sports program. I realize that one of the best ways to enjoy experiences and make memories is to live in the moment rather than desperately looking forward to events that may not even end up happening. Despite all the seniors have lost, I think that we will now appreciate our best memories even more than we would have before.
In the end, everyone lost many things from COVID-19. Even though the senior class of 2021 lost most of their biggest high school events, there are many things we will take with us from this experience. Hopefully things are closer to normal for us next year in college, and if not I know we will continue to be resilient and make the best of the great things we are given.
