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race Allen has been a Smiths Station panther for seven years — she moved to the area from Russell County in fifth grade. Allen said that she has loved the school since the first day she moved here, and that Smith Station’s great community and staff added to her experience. The now-senior was involved in several of the clubs that Smiths Station has to offer, including the volleyball team, of which she was captain during her junior
year. “As the years progressed, I’ve taken on more leadership roles and this year I’m senior class president … and I’m part of honor societies like Beta Club, National Honor Society, Math Honor Society, Science Honor Society, English Honor Society and, previous to that, I was part of student council,” she said. Like many high school students across the country, the pandemic has turned the average American high school experience topsyturvy. “It was hard because I am a face-to-face learner,” Allen said. “I have to see [the teacher], I have to see the notes, I have to hear [the teacher] and transitioning from that to virtual, to not talking to my teacher, not having her there to help me was very hard. And senior year, you want your grades to be good and it was really stressful to keep it up and you had to be motivated because a lot of times you just didn’t want to get out of bed because you were so used to being in lockdown and it was really hard making the transition from being at school to being online. “Even when you came back to school, everybody’s anxiety was so bad because we didn’t want to get COVID. So that was hard too because you had to stress to keep your mask on, you had to keep distanced and a lot of the work that we did, it was hard to do [the work] when you have to be 6 feet apart. So, it was a really big
GRACE By Lofton Wheeles Photos Contributed By Grace Allen —64—
