As graduation gets closer, seniors are reflecting on their high school experience, especially the impact of COVID-19.  Freshman year for the seniors was difficult because we were coming into our high school career during Covid. Many students were already afraid of the unknown territory of high school but starting during Covid was a whole different story.

One issue many people had was the classes were hard and they struggled to keep their grades up. Senior Izick Anderson said, “Well it made me very much lazier I didn’t do a lot of my schoolwork on days we weren’t actually in school and as a result I had terrible grades Freshman year.”

Senior Logan Wagner expressed, “I was virtual my freshman year and I had the comfort of my dogs. I also struggled with my classes.” During this time people also struggled with self-confidence and anxiety.

Senior Ashlyn Conley stated “Well, when I was a freshman I was a very nervous, anxious person. I was learning to deal with a lot of my problems involving anxiety, and because of that freshman year was a bit rough. I will say it was my first year doing swimming and I had an amazing time getting to know everyone on the team, and getting introduced to a new sport. I also started doing jujitsu around this time and it really helped me build self confidence and taught me a lot about myself that I didn’t know before. My favorite memory would probably be when I got second in my jujitsu tournament. Granted it was in the summer after my freshman year, but it was right after school ended so I count it.”

We had days where we were virtual and days where we were in person. Senior Trae Cook said, “We didn’t get to experience much of our freshman year.” Many seniors agree with Trae’s statement because many activities we have now were not available.

Another Senior Olivia (Liv) Baker said, “we were able to have Wednesdays off which was a really nice break in the middle of the week but we had no school events so it was kind of upsetting knowing we had miss out on many things in our high school experience.”

Senior Leila Schwer shared, “It was so different and I didn’t get the opportunity to join all the activities that they offer now. Classes were so small when we were split on when to come to school by last name, and no one showed up to the teams meetings, and the iPads didn’t always work.” Some Seniors felt intimidated or scared when they started high school during Covid-19. Senior Lilliann (Lillie) Caranda noted, “starting high school during Covid-19 was intimidating. My freshman year was not a fun experience because there were no activities happening.”