With the school being closed since March and all spring events being cancelled, seniors admit they are disappointed and frustrated.

Senior Owen Koch had been looking forward to his second-semester senior experience. Koch said, “When thinking about the end of the school year, I first thought that it would be super fun, and I was looking forward to it. But now that I’ve spent it all in quarantine, it sucks because I can’t see any of my friends or have the ‘second semester of senior year’ experience.”

Jessica Liang, another senior, feels the same way, admitting that she misses attending events with her friends most of all. Liang said, “I wanted to graduate with my class and have a final memorable time together. I wanted to have end-of-the-year food parties that were going to be thrown by our teachers. I also wanted to experience prom.”

Koch is frustrated that he wasn’t able to end his high school career like every previous graduating classes. Koch said, “I wanted my senior year to end stress-free and fun, by having little to no homework, and hanging out with my friends, having a prom and a graduation. I just wanted it to end the way it does for every other class.”

Senior Ben Kloppman is frustrated with the changes much like the other seniors. Kloppman said, “Pretty much everything’s changed about the end of my senior year. A lot of senior traditions, like prom and graduation, have been changed or are still up in the air. A lot of stuff I was looking forward to probably won’t end up happening.”

Heidi Ngo, who is also a senior, says the pandemic has affected her differently in particular. Ngo said, “I’ve been impacted because when I need to go out to buy necessities such as medication or groceries, I feel more nervous than I should. This is due to me being both high risk to virus because I have asthma and having fear of being affected by a hate crime because I’m Asian.”

Koch feels that the pandemic has robbed him of a special time in his life. “This period of my school career was supposed to be the most stress-free and I was supposed to be able to focus on hanging out with my friends before they go to college, where I will be able to see them again for a long time. I feel like I’ve been robbed of that opportunity and now well just all be leaving for college without even bonding before,” said Koch.

Ngo feels that she didn’t get the senior year she was hoping for. “I was planning on having a good time at prom with my friends just dancing along. I was planning on graduation photos for proof that we did it, we finally graduated and we made it out. It’s so vastly different from reality,” said Ngo.

While Kloppman is frustrated he still understands why the school is moving forward with a modified graduation ceremony. “I appreciate the school’s safety-first approach while still letting kids walk the stage. I think the administrators have a hard job right now figuring out how all this stuff is gonna work out, so I appreciate them putting effort into it and doing their best with the given circumstances,” said Kloppman.