The Sage Informer

The Class of 2019 was the last class to have a “normal” high school career before the Coronavirus Pandemic struck the nation’s surface. The pandemic of 2020 caused schools around the globe to turn to online learning making it challenging, both physically and mentally, for most students. This year’s seniors have never gotten the chance to truly experience a ‘normal’ highschool year until this year.

Before coming into high school, many students like Amanda Dasher and Samantha Griffith had different thoughts on how their high school career would look like. According to senior Amanda Dasher, “Growing up I watched a lot of disney movies so my expectations were very high for I guess the ‘cheesy’ high school stuff.” Before entering high school, most students were very anxious about starting their first of 4 years in high school, but little did they know what lay ahead of them.

The Coronavirus swept through the globe in March 2020, causing both a panic in the world and a stress through schools. According to Senior Samantha Griffith, “Covid started March of 2020, and It was stressful because some places where you live do not have good internet. Which made you miss class and get behind. Not only that, you didn’t get to socialize with anyone other than on social media.” Students were put not only through the stress of adjusting to online learning, but they had to adjust to the change of not being able to have in-person communication and contact with their friends and loved ones.

The class of 2020 and below had a different high school experience than what they expected before coming into high school. I spoke to both Dasher and Griffith.  They both shared similar responses illustrating the differences they experienced compared to what they expected. As stated by Dasher, “I did not expect to have to go remote or wear masks, or basically have to distance myself from friends and immediate family members. I guess it was very different from what I originally expected. I didn’t think that anything like that could or would ever happen.” While each senior had a different experience, they all had similar struggles when it came to never returning back to school the spring break of 2020, and the change in ways that education was presented. Later stated by Griffith, “Older generations often say how they miss their high school career or high school is the best years of your life, but students our age probably won’t say the same because we did not get the similar experience(s) as they did.” Therefore this year’s seniors have never truly gotten to experience the ‘real’ high school experience until this year. Although this has had a great impact on generations below the class of 2020, this year’s seniors have a bright perspective and feel they can use their high school experience to apply to future situations.

Kayden Wilhelm, Staff Writer
Wilka24@sages.us