A Unique High School Graduation

A Unique High School Graduation

By Elizabeth Schoen

(Editor’s Note: Lizzy has just moved to Minnesota from Virginia where she was active in that state’s student division, she is now a freshman at St. Olaf college in Northfield Minnesota. In this article she demonstrates with feeling the experience of graduating from high school during this turbulent time.)

There is not much to say about graduating high school via youtube video that has not already been said. There is a devastation to receiving a diploma in your front yard that cannot be expressed in one article or one feeling. No one person is going to handle it the same way but the universal feeling seems to be confusion at how this could happen and an inability to comprehend how our worlds have changed so much in less than six months.

There is a quarantine concept that people all over have mentioned of feeling like one never knows what day it is. I think this encapsulates the most confounding part of the pandemic for graduates. I feel like I am still in high school.  I have nothing saying otherwise, no true memory that doesn’t feel like just another day in the life of a high schooler. In a sense this feels like so much is happening outside of my world that within my personal circle and brain there is no room for a major life change to also be happening.

When it feels like the world is changing so fast around me there is no way I have time to process my own growth or monumental moments because in comparison, they feel small. It feels wrong to be celebrating something when everything around me seems to be crumbling on a global scale. There is no escape.

Normally when people have that feeling they have the ability to escape to their safe spaces and their peers, but we cannot run away from our problems to our social circles or hobbies because of social distancing and quarantining.

Many of us celebrated our largest achievements to date with only our immediate families with whom we have been quarantined for four months. During this pandemic I have turned 18, graduated high school, and moved into college. I did this all only having seen my friends in person three times and always one at a time not together. I lost my senior project, my graduation ceremony, my travel plans, and a play I had planned on directing since sophomore year and had been rehearsing for months. Every person lost many plans, but I think people who were closing distinct chapters in their life have lost the most and have the most uncertain futures.

I would like to make clear I have no regrets relating to my senior year. I would not make the choice to endanger my life or the lives of those in my family. I realize that my senior year on my school's part and on my part was not up to us if we wanted to keep everyone safe. The point of this article is not for pity or to give kids my age an excuse to break the rules and go and do dumb things that could cost them or those around them their lives. I simply write this to give some perspective as to what it is like graduating from high school during this chaotic and painful time in human history and why all of the graduates in your life are probably experiencing a lot of whiplash and anxiety. So please be patient with us if we are angry or confused; it’s just the perpetual anxiety we likely all feel.