When I stepped foot into school on the first day of senior year, I thought I was prepped for a wild ride. I wasn’t. When I stepped foot in school that Thursday, I didn’t know it could be the last time.
It all happened so quickly. It started off with my BioTech co-op at UMass Medical School’s Theurkauf Lab being canceled until further notice. My research was just put on hold, possibly for good, just like that. Then the advisory board meeting I was presenting my research at was canceled. And just like that, there was no school, no dance practice, no senior experience.
I am struggling to accept the fact that I am just home now for an indefinite amount of time, possibly weeks, grappling with the idea that I may not be able to walk the stage at graduation or get down with my friends one last time at prom. And those are very shallow things to care so deeply about when people are dying.
My mom is at extremely high risk with both lung and heart issues paired with a prediabetic history. If she gets COVID-19, she could die and that’s something my family needs to worry about every day. Because of the severity of that, I feel guilty as I’m sure many others do for fretting over the state of our senior year. Yet, we all still feel the pain of the possibility we unknowingly already had our last day of high school.
Until we know the fate of the conclusion to our high school experience, we are all desperately trying to suck up all that’s left of school. We find ourselves texting the one girl we only talk to in class, getting excited to see everyone in Zoom classes, and practicing for that one last senior dance we don’t know if we’ll ever get to perform. We find ourselves forgoing senioritis for the first time in months and actually missing school. We find ourselves missing the days where we could see friends, buy toilet paper at the store, and not live in fear of the future, things we all took for granted.
Until I get told my senior year is over, it lives on in my house as I celebrate every college acceptance and continue to make a dress for prom I never know if I will wear. Hope is the only thing holding the Class of 2020 together and no virus can take that away completely. While we are all apart, we stand together in hope of a virus-less conclusion to our senior year.