Letter From the Editor

Letter from the Editors

Many of us entered high school with preconceived notions of what might be in store for us the next 4 years. Rallys and dances, football games and loud student sections; we know all of these would be facets of our high school experiences, but how oh-so unsuspecting we were about what was really awaiting our future selves. Tragedy in our hometown, nationwide unrest, devastating wildfires, and of course a pandemic, were the headlines that we woke up to so many of our early mornings getting ready for school. Yet, these events are not what define our class, but rather our response to these events. In times of need for our community, this class not only continued our high school education through it all but stepped forward and provided support for others. Although the words “unprecedented” and “challenging” might have lost their meaning through rapid overuse in the last year, there’s no denying that we’ve experienced education in a year unlike any other. We had to forgo the traditional ways of being a student, and witness many accidentally unmuted microphones on Zoom along the way. Our goal as The Lancer this year was to provide our class with a sense of normality in a time where nobody seems to know what they’re doing. Adopting a new platform at the beginning of the year and transitioning to fully website based mid-year wasn’t our ideal senior year as student journalists, yet the experience of navigating a new way of doing things is something that we’ve all become accustomed to recently and provided us with a new outlook on what student journalism can be, in the same way our class has been provided a new outlook on the highschool experience. We hope that we’ve filled our responsibility as a student paper these 4 years and provided the student body with a chance to share their story, and we want to be able to do that one last time with our final issue from The Lancer’s seniors. Without further ado, please enjoy our final recap of our wild high school experience and congratulations to the Thousand Oaks class of 2021. Signed, Sophie Crivier Tanner Patterson Natalie Venable