A Quaran-Teen

A senior’s take on missing out on the last semester of high school and the milestones that coincide.

by: SOPHIA BOYCE editor-in-chief

I have wanted to be done with high school since my brother graduated three years ago. After attending a five week camp at Northwestern University last summer that feeling only got stronger. It was weird going back to high school after being in classes with people with whom I share a passion and taking normal classes instead of “How to Stalk People 101” (Journalism. . . am I right?). Our instructors told us we were going to “wish away our senior year” because we had already tasted college life, and you know what, they were totally right. But now, because of Covid-19, I have spent a big portion of my life in bed for the 70th consecutive day. Thus my senior year has eectively come to a close, and I wish that I had savored it. To me, high school has felt like a never ending cycle. As each new year started, I felt like I was just picking up where the last year ended; It never felt like a new start to me. The routine was exactly the same– I was going through the same motions. The only thing that changed were my classes. I still woke up at 7:00 am and laid in bed for 15 minutes, got to school between 7:42 and 7:45, and waited in my car for Macey to show up so we could walk into school together. But now, we are all in a weird limbo. For seniors, if you were in AP classes, you were still doing work, but whenever you felt like it, or maybe not at all. I was still putting together this entire issue of the BGQ, but I felt like I had done nothing for ten weeks. I genuinely felt numb inside. I am nothing without a routine. I have no idea how I managed to go to school and do work for 13 years. I couldn’t do an hour of school work at home without losing my mind. The news is horrible. I only read headlines (a blasphemous sentence coming from a journalist), but I physically could not bring myself to read about all these horrible things happening right now. I didn’t want to read that the death toll in America surpassed 80,000 people, or about President Trump saying “You should just drink bleach!” All I did was lay in bed, watch Hulu, play board games with my family, threaten to cut my brother’s hair while he sleeps, or watch Tik Toks about how the class of 2020 doesn’t get to graduate. I remember back in October maybe, when Je Heethuis from Jostens was telling us about all the things we would do for the last time as seniors; the last football game, the last basketball game, the last dance, the last anything all the way until we would walk across that stage at graduation. I vividly recall his booming voice telling us about how emotional we would be, and how we would all cry. It didn’t really click for me back in October, those didn’t seem like big things to me, but big moments never seem big when you’re living them.

“Big moments never seem big when you’re living them.”

Now that our senior year so unceremoniously ended on a random Friday in March, and I have all the time in the world to contemplate all the things I, and all my friends, don’t get to do, I am very emotional, and cry often. Honestly, It’s a really weird feeling. People are dying in the thousands, my parents argue about money because my dad’s pay has been cut by 90%, andI’m upset about not having a graduation and not getting to go on my senior trip. I know that I’m very privileged, and it is selfish to be upset about not having a graduation while people are dying, but saying that, I know I’m allowed to be upset. The class of 2020 got short changed. Yeah, maybe prom wasn’t going to be amazing, and graduation would probably have been cold, but those were memories we were supposed to make with our friends, with the people we’ve grown up with for the past 13 years regardless of the quality of the memories. Now, instead of having pictures with our best friends from senior prom and graduation, we’re going to have the memory of a school walk through instead of graduation and signs in our yards. Both kind gestures, but certainly not a suitable substitute for a high school graduation ceremony. My family threw me a fake graduation on zoom with all my family and my friends from Northwestern, but realistically, nothing can take the place or make up for stolen opportunities. Perhaps, the thing that sucks the most is the reality that there is nothing anyone can do about it. The class of 2020 became victims of circumstance. We got to watch our friends and older siblings graduate all the while wishing it was us, but knowing we’d have our time. Instead, due to circumstances out of our hands, that time with our friends and loved ones has become a lesson in isolation and social distance; an omen of the “new normal.” School’s out, seniors have, for intents and purposes, graduated, mentally if not physically, and summer has arrived. The inevitability of summer brings with it the time honored practice of leaving high school behind, just like every graduating class before us has done. However, it’s infinitely more dicult to move on when you’re stuck in your house and you have no idea if what you were moving on to will even be there for you in the fall and nothing in your life has prepared you for this moment.//