For senior Diya Brijesh, a math class during the pandemic is now the reason she lives next to her best friend.
When senior Gousikaa Suresh moved from Colorado to attend school at Liberty High School, she was placed into the same Zoom class as Brijesh as different students from the district were placed together. They were taking Algebra II, and used Google Chat to communicate. This coincidence led to conversation, and soon, their families became close enough to persuade Suresh’s move in right next to her and attend Heritage. Four years later, both are set to walk the stage at graduation together before throwing up their caps into the air to signal the end of an era.
The senior class is officially the last to have experienced online learning at Heritage. A time of uncertainty, the pandemic managed to create a butterfly effect of events; from situations like becoming life-long best friends with someone completely new, to difficulties grappling a transition into a new stage of youthood. However, what’s undeniable is the effects it had on us all.
For many seniors, the first sign of this tumultuous era was a fateful email calling for an extra week of Spring Break they received in 8th grade, and 9th grade was filled with Zoom meetings, masks, and mixed-learning.
“I was actually traveling during Spring Break and we were in a cabin with little cell-service,” senior Tanmayee Bharadwaj said. “My mom told me and my group of friends, and we were all overjoyed because school being canceled was a good thing back then. But then one week became three weeks became three months and then eighth grade completely got canceled.”
In the summer months leading up to their first day of high school, many seniors recall feeling little excitement for this new stage in their lives, as it was hard to feel excited when nothing felt real anymore.
The morning of senior Dareen Issa’s first day was a far stretch from the exciting montage shown in every typical high school movie. She woke up at 8:20, put on a slightly nicer shirt, and was taken outside with her sister for a little photoshoot in front of the front door to commemorate a first day. Then she came back in, sat back down, waited patiently for a Zoom link, and uttered ‘Hi’s’ to all her teachers until the beginning 20 minutes of introductions were over and an hour of sitting in silence was all that was left.
“It was so surreal,” she said.
However, now the difficulty lies with remembering that these surreal experiences with the pandemic are no longer present-day experiences, but memories of the past.
“I was talking about it last week with my friends, saying, ‘There’s no way that COVID happened [four] years ago,’” Issa said. “I felt like it was such an integral part of our high school experience, but it happened five years ago. And we’re still recovering from it.”
Many seniors have felt this recovery, and feel as though they need to recover from being ‘robbed’ of a freshman year: a time that allows them to explore the person they wish to become in high school.
“That whole year, even now, I experienced the repercussions of not being in person,” Bharadwaj said. “The grades below us had an actual freshman year, and that is like your formative year. That’s where you make all your friends, make your connections, and figure out where you’re going to be for the next year. And that might change obviously, but we never even got that.”
For some seniors, freshman year also came as an obstacle to ambitions or goals they’ve had previously, as it was hard to maintain motivation.
“In seventh grade, I made a five-year plan,” Issa said. “And it was very ambitious; I found it in my closet the other day. It was like, ‘Yeah I’m going to stay a 4.0 GPA, and then be Valedictorian, and then I’m going to do all these things and whatnot, [but] then COVID hit. And I wanted to try hard, like I’m still trying hard in high school, but I think I was more comfortable with being complacent because I was just like, ‘There’s no way’.”
Brijesh, the school’s Valedictorian, describes relating to Issa’s turbulent journey throughout her high-school academics.
“The most I’ve ever felt stressed out about maintaining my rank was junior year when there was that pressure of, ‘Oh, this is the rank you’re going to be applying to colleges with; oh, everyone’s going to know if you’ve dropped,’” Brijesh said. “I put a lot of pressure on myself, but also the feeling that other people know what it’s going to be. And, to be fair, sophomore year and junior: not the greatest years, but senior year I’m having so much fun.”
Though the class of ‘24 cannot deny the effects the pandemic has had on their high-school careers, many Heritage students agree it’s a time they successfully came out of. What started with a tumultuous freshman year filled with uncertainty, of how to truly define what will become the next four years of their lives, ended in a final conclusion to the journey that was difficult to undertake in the first place. Caps, gowns, the whole works.
“It was definitely something different,” Brijesh said. “A memory that I don’t know if I’m going to be happy or sad about whenever I look back on high school, I feel like I’ve just come to accept that was part of my high school experience, and I really cannot change it now.”
