We all knew that senior year was going to be hard. We embraced ourselves as the journey towards the next part of our lives began. We were told that the hardest part of this year would be college applications, and that the wait for a response would add on to the stress that was already dominating our feelings. At first, they were right. Gathering all the documents, writing endless essays and supplements, and filling out the same application over and over again was already stressful enough. We thought that we were going through the hardest part of senior year; then came October and November.
A fight for our democracy had called for a stop to this. Many of my classmates went out to protest and fight for our voice to be heard. School continued, nonetheless, and the workload doubled. Maybe this was going to be the most stressful part of senior year; trying to regain the momentum that we traded for fighting for our democracy. That was more than a fair trade, if you ask me. I was happy to see that my classmates had their priorities straight, and with time, were able to get back into the rhythm of school.
Unfortunately, Murphy’s Law came into play once again. After a relatively smooth third quarter, the world was hit by a pandemic. Not only was the senior trip cut short, but the seniors lost access to other events that we’ve been looking forward to since middle school. We were denied the opportunity to physically carry out a senior prank; sure we could do it online, but it just isn’t the same. We were denied the opportunity to have a senior skip day; a tradition that has been done since forever ago, and not completed by one senior class in the past 5 years (and probably longer). More importantly, we were denied the chance to have a proper graduation; an event that we have been looking forward to for so long.
Yes, there is a pandemic going around, and yes, there are people who are less fortunate than us; however, this doesn’t mean that we don’t have the right to feel upset about things we were looking forward to. As I mentioned in previous articles, you cannot compare problems, and saying that people “have it worse” just invalidates a person’s feelings. Everyone is allowed to be upset over not having the ability to do things they were looking forward to.
