Normality: it is something I wish I hadn’t taken for granted on the morning of March 13th. When I heard the news, I thought it was a joke until a barrage of news feed notifications, texts, and Snapchat messages hit my phone like a nuclear missile. As I walked out the doors that day a thought passed through my brain: what if that was the last day of my senior year? I quickly brushed the thought off as irrelevant and irrational as I expected us to be back in six weeks. I didn’t realize until later how relevant and rational that question was. 

In the following weeks the anger, disappointment, and sadness built within me. There was so much that I would be missing: a senior track season, senior prom, the list goes on. I was angry at our governor, our president, but most of all I was angry at myself. I had taken so much of my everyday life for granted, and now, the normality I once had was gone, replaced by uncertainty and chaos. 

But what good does it do to be angry with something you can’t control? I am sure many seniors can relate with me from an emotional standpoint when we were told our senior year was over, but this is where we as a class have a choice. We can either become angry, disappointed, and ultimately let our emotions get the best of us, or we can make our senior year the best year we have ever had. It is hard to see the opportunity we have right now since we are unable to leave our houses or see our friends, but when it’s all over we have an opportunity to embrace an extremely unique situation and make memories with it. 

We have an opportunity to come together and go out in style. The memories which we may have lost to our senior prom, or senior mother tea, senior breakfast, and other events, we can make up for in the memories we develop on our own, with our friends, when we are able to come back together. 

So, to my fellow seniors, you’re not alone. There are thousands of seniors out there who have worked their butts off the last 12 years just like we have to try and make this happen. We are all disappointed, but we can’t let that hold us down. Realize that we have an extremely unique opportunity to make our senior year what we want, without school. This may be the last time we see each other together for a long time; let’s make the best of the time we have left. We only have one shot to make this what we want, so don’t just let the time go by while you are feeling emotional about what happened to our senior year. You will feel even more depressed if you don’t take this opportunity to make the final memories you will have of your school career. So let’s live in the moment, and make the best of an ever-evolving situation. As Garth Stein said in his novel The Art of Racing in the Rain “That in which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny”.  

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