How Has Covid-19 Affected After Highschool Plans?

By Sydney Slaton

Many things have had to change due to the pandemic, especially school, and many juniors and seniors have had to adjust their plans for college.

Planning for college is stressful for many students, few juniors and seniors thought that they’d have to change their plans suddenly because of a pandemic, but students have been managing, senior Riley

Vandaveer seems to have figured things out easily enough.For Vandaveer the biggest part of picking a college is sports. He plans on being on the track team in college and just wants to figure out if “[he] likes the team or

not,” which is hard since he can’t visit colleges.

“There’s an N.C.A.A. dead period until April 15 so I can’t even see the coaches in person, which is a big part of picking,” Vandaveer said.

Junior Sarah Day has been planning on going to KU or K-State for most of her life until the pandemic hit.

“Last summer I was like if I go to KU or K-State, am I really going to get the

full college experience because things are shut down. So I started thinking about my other interests, and I really like to do hair,” Day said.Before

Covid-19 doing hair “was always something [Day] really liked” but she didn’t think she could make a career out of it. Day’s plans

have changed a lot due to the pandemic, but now she has a new idea.

“So now my plan is to go to Johnson County Community College and do their cosmetology program, which is a two-year program where your certificate and then you can take the Kansas cosmetology boards exam,” Day said.

Covid-19 has changed many student’s plans for what they’re going to do after high school, whether they haven’t changed all that much or they changed drastically, almost everyone can agree on that.

“It changed, I’m no longer planning on going to a four-year college, I’m just going to plan on going to a cosmetology school because I realized it’s something that I feel like I can always find a job in, and that I really like doing,” Day said.