USA: Blog: ‘There will be replacements, but there won’t be equivalents’
USA/ 05 September 2020/ Source/ https://www.9news.com/
Margot Swetich is a senior at Northglenn High School who is in the process of applying for college.
NORTHGLENN, Colo. — Editor’s note: Margot Swetich is a senior at Northglenn High School who will be blogging about her experiences during this upcoming school year. Read her full bio at the bottom of this story.
My emotional state in general is comparable to a radio. There are all these stations lined up; some of them play upbeat oldies that make me feel nostalgic, some of them play punk music that makes me feel empowered and some of them play ballads that make me want to cry.
You may be tempted to assume that that is only how it is to be a teenager, but I would argue that that is what it is to be human, and teens just have it turned to a higher volume. We go between channels and they aren’t always good, but there is always a chance for something better.
Now imagine that someone took that radio and gave it to a toddler. The dials are so fun to spin, the screen that tells you the channel number is exciting to watch and the constantly shifting sounds are overwhelming but engaging. My life during this pandemic has felt like that. Someone is shifting the dials with reckless abandon, and there is little I can do.
This week has been better in terms of work. There is a better flow of things from class to class, the workload is not too heavy and I am making it work.
However, there is this itch that starts whenever I get too comfortable. I go from being content to suddenly being angry and disappointed, from happy to heavy with sadness. I just can’t help it.
As a senior, there were so many things I was excited to do one more time. I was going to do them right this time around, and I was going to do them better than I have in the past. I was going to watch the rivalry football game and cheer for that trophy to come back to my school from our competitor at Thornton High School. I was going to help build the giant letter “N” that we set on fire at our homecoming game, and be there as it burned.
I was going to go to homecoming for one final time with a group of friends who gave me the purest form of confidence. I was going to perfect a performance to give at the Colorado Thespian Convention, room in Denver with one of my best friends and audition for a great number of colleges at that same event.
And now, I will do none of that. There will be replacements, but there will not be equivalents.
I am putting all of the effort I can into being okay with this, but it is not easy, and I assume my fellow seniors are all feeling the same pang of loss as they think of the year we could have, and should have, had.
School itself is fine, but academics are not everything. The events that get us excited to be part of a school community are so essential to making high school fun and engaging. Those traditions make the difficult nights studying, the long days of finals and the busy weeks of activities worth the time. We get to be kids and be loud, over-enthusiastic and joyful.
Now, we sit at our computers every day and do our work, and we are alone. We are never child-like, never loud, never quite joyful. In a way this is the seniors’ final year of some semblance of childhood, before we are considered adults and expected to find our own fun in the world. But this year, there is very little fun to be found.
I don’t want to leave it there, however, because I am of strong belief that things will continue to improve, just like they have even in our first week. We will get more comfortable on Zoom calls, we will find ways to participate in joint projects as a school and we will get better at calling our friends when we need someone to talk to. We will start having club meetings and start to feel connected to others again. This is far from the death of all things.
I, for one, have enjoyed having time to brew coffee between classes, the making of my own lunch rather than eating school food, and the comfort of my own space that I know so well.
My friends Aiden and Leslie like that they are allowed to leave their cameras off on calls and they don’t feel the pressure of interacting with people, and Rowan likes that he has free time between classes when he finishes early. Several of my friends like that we can still chat with each other by using social media so we aren’t so totally alone.
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