To the Class of 2020,

It feels like it’s been a lifetime of hardships sometimes doesn’t it? We started in this world after the tragedy of 9/11. Growing up we heard all about the awful things going on in the world around us… bombings, school shootings, stock market crashes, hurricanes, floods invading our homes, wild fires.  You name it, and we seem to have lived through it. 

The effects of most of these events were felt in many different ways. Some of us seniors were impacted head on, and some of us felt and mourned the loss for others. Regardless, we made it through to now. 

At the start of this year it was all planned out. We were the leaders of the school starting our first day of senior year with the senior sunrise. We’d been waiting our whole lives for this. It was supposed to be the best.

Football season and fall sports was next. For a lot of us, Friday Night Lights with our friends was what got us through the week. After that, we pushed through weeks of assignments and tests to gain those final graduation credits. 

Sooner than we knew it, our first semester of senior year was coming to an end. Anxious about finals week, excited for a three week winter break, and a little sad we were already halfway there, it was all going to be okay because we still had the other half left, and that was the part we were most excited about. 

Semester two was all planned out too: a lot of us newly turning 18, becoming nuanced adults and soaking up the newly gained freedom. January and February were rocky, something didn’t quite feel right starting our last semester this way. Most of us just blamed it on the gloomy weather, decided to just push through it and get to the good part. 

But here we are now, at a halt, watching everything we had planned out so perfectly be taken away from us by something none of us have even heard of before now.

It started with Spring Break. We were scolded for trying to hang out with our friends during the earned break and then shortly after, we got put under quarantine. With little to no interaction with friends, online learning and prom canceled, a normal school day became a distant memory. Then, yesterday, we got the heartbreaking news… we won’t be going back to school this year. 

The final months of our senior year were taken away from us, without any control or any idea of what is really going on in the world around us. But right there is a message in itself. We will never fully understand what’s going on in our world. We’re never going to fully know how to deal with each situation that gets thrown at us. 

This pandemic is dark, heavy, and destructive. But regardless of how strong the effects of this pandemic, our class, the class of 2020, is stronger. The strength and positivity we all share with each other on a day to day basis is breathtaking. Our class has built each other up and leaned upon each other to get through these crazy years of high school and then again to get through these heartbreaking realities. 

Class of 2020,  notice through this whole piece it was said, “we made it through it,” or “we decided to push through.” It’s what we’ve been taught all these years, it’s what’s wired in our brains. We have been the class to get through the hard parts and we’ll do it again. 

Semester one was good. We made some memories that will now be most memorable, without even knowing it. Our first senior pep rally, our first football game standing in the front as seniors, homecoming, volleyball games, basketball games, boys soccer games, unified games, yearbook pictures and senior pictures. We have all of those things that we got to experience and cant be taken away. May we hold them close to our hearts and use them to try and patch the holes left from these last few months.

Despite the beautiful and personal stories and struggles we all hold inside us, we made it, together. We did it Class of 2020. We are stronger now and each one of us has so much to offer to the world. Be grateful for the memories we made together, and be excited to see what we’ll all do with the rest of our lives waiting to be started. Society mourns with us, and we are not alone. Although it may not be entirely what we planned on, we still did it. Congratulations Class of 2020.