Mar. 13 2020. It was a Friday during 6th hour when they made the call. We would have an extra week of spring break for deep cleaning of the school. Everybody was smiling and excited that we would have an extra week of spring break. Little did we know then, that the rest of our high school experience would change. After that week passed, we went on spring break as planned. We all thought that school would pick up as normal after that. We were very wrong.

   Now I am a senior in my last semester of high school.

   When I was a kid, I longed to be a senior in high school. They called the shots, they were older, more mature, cooler and most of all, they had prom. Prom has been idolized by my generation for as long as I can remember. From the prom number in “High School Musical 3” to “Mean Girls,” the prom scenes were so extravagant. Unfortunately, last year, the seniors did not get a senior prom, and we did not get a junior prom. This year, it’s not looking too good for us either.

   This year, we missed out on a lot- homecoming, winter formal, pep rallies, football games and the list is still going. We’ll probably miss out on banquet, as I’ve already said, prom and human interaction, with e-learning and masks. 

   Now, obviously, this isn’t the end of the world considering the millions of people affected by the pandemic. It just sucks. You live your life looking forward to something and seeing it be taken away. There are a million things to be grateful for: I’m not sick, my family’s not sick and my friend’s aren’t sick. But that doesn’t take away the fact that prom was taken away twice for seniors and this year isn’t great.

   It’s my last semester of high school now and my feelings are very confused. Part of me can’t wait to graduate and be done with high school and all the stress it brings. Another part of me just wants to pause and take in the fact that it’s my senior year, I’m turning 18, and I’m almost an adult. The other part of me, a tiny part hidden behind my independence, wants to crawl in bed between my parents and never grow up.

   There are parts we’ve never even thought of when it comes to growing up- getting jobs, paying taxes, applying for colleges and how complicated it is. I’m very grateful to have made it this far, but I just wanted to say, it’s my last semester of high school, and I have no idea what the rest of my life is going to look like. And that’s okay.