My Experience as a 2020 Graduate
Carly Cardamone
12/1/2020
WRT 120
Professor McCourt
My Experience as a 2020 Graduate
As I am sure most people can agree on, 2020 was one of the worst years to happen. It was especially awful for those graduating. I am going to tell you about my personal experience as a high school senior during 2020.
September 2019, I was so excited to start my senior year of high school. I finally got to the point where I made real friendships and relationships and enjoyed going to school every day. My focus at this time was applying to colleges and choosing where I wanted to end up. I stressed on writing my college essay and grew a connection with my English teacher who helped me write it, make it interesting and helped me decide of where I wanted to go. I wanted to make it a priority to go to every senior event that happened. After the first football game I should have known my senior year was going downhill. It was the first week of September and everyone dressed up in white and blue and covered themselves in paint. That night it was 40 degrees, windy and rainy, clearly the ideal weather to watch a football game in. Also, our school lost 52–6, to our rival school. The next event was our senior kickoff dance that was on my 17th birthday, so I got my license! The dance was supposed to be an outside barbeque, but it also ended up being rainy and windy that day, so it got moved to the gym and they provided us with candy. The last senior event that I got to experience was the one I was the most excited for, powderpuff. Powderpuff is when the junior and senior girls play flag football, and the boys are the cheerleaders. Usually, it is rigged for the seniors to win which everyone is fine with but of course powderpuff 2019 was not. The juniors ended up beating us by 6 points and that caused a lot of conflict between the two grades. The seniors decided to have our senior skip day early and no one went to school the day after powderpuff. Even though I did not have the ideal senior year I wanted, I am so grateful I got to experience what I did.
After winter break school was normal, getting flooded with assignments, going to basketball games, and still figuring out what college to go to. At this point I already had all my acceptances back and it was just a waiting game. When March came around the senior class was getting excited for the class trip to Disney World. All the students were getting clothes, planning what rides to go on, and what restaurants to eat at. We had one week until our class trip everyone was so excited and ready, until the country went on complete lockdown. My school had no plan at all for how they were going to do online learning. I remember feeling completely lost, I was not motivated to get out of bed or to do any assignments. I felt that everything was taken away from me. Our senior trip got rescheduled to the beginning of June, which left some hope. But as the quarantine kept getting extended, no one knew what the plan was for anything.
The assignments I were getting were not tough at all, it was all busy work. The school district did not allow the teachers to use zoom to teach so they sent out daily emails with our assignments, each one being due by the end of the day. It was hard being locked up in my house all day. It was genuinely hard to keep myself entertained. I felt that my days were very repetitive, with nothing interesting happening. My mom is an art teacher at an elementary school so I picked up a hobby of making crafts with items found around the house that her students could do as well. I also painted a lot; I am not a very artistic person, but I enjoyed painting with my sister almost every day. One of the main hobbies I picked up was dancing. I was always very intrigued by dancers and wanted to be one. So, I took my free time and would watch dance tutorials on YouTube and learn different routines. Dancing is something I enjoy doing and overtime I got a little good at it. I had a love/hate relationship with quarantine. I enjoyed the easy assignments, even though I can promise that I did not learn anything new. I also enjoyed sleeping in and doing different things with my family. I hated not seeing my friends though. I only saw my best friend during the whole quarantine, our other friends were not allowed to see anyone for 2 months.
Once May came around life felt a little bit more normal, I got to see my friends and more places started opening again. Senior prom got cancelled due to the pandemic, but my friends and I decided to go down the shore to get some pictures in our dresses. Our senior trip also got cancelled, but at this point in my life I did not care, I just wanted to know what was going to happen with graduation. The graduation that happened was not what I expected, but it was what it was. My high school gave each student a time to be filmed walking across the stage in our caps and gowns then edited a video to be livestreamed on a private channel for everyone to watch on graduation day. I did not do anything special for graduating, my best friend and I got dressed in our caps and gowns, watched the livestream, then took pictures. I did not get to have a graduation party, except on Father’s Day my uncle had our family over at his house for a barbeque and he got me a cake.
I started working again in the summer and going down the shore just enjoying my life. I made sure I stayed safe while still having fun. I made my decision to go to West Chester University at the last possible minute. I also stayed in contact with my English teacher as she helped me make the decision. I am very grateful that I got part of my senior year and I feel awful for those who cannot experience any of it. Getting all of this taken away from me made me feel more grateful for the little things in life and helped me grow a stronger relationship with the important people in my life. Hopefully, one day a normal college experience will happen, and I will never have to talk about the coronavirus again.