(Editor’s note: Rogers Park resident Ana Gore has been a RogersEdgeReporter contributor for two years. She will attend DePaul University next year.)
I bought my prom dress in July, a testament to the fact that I did not expect to lose the end of my senior year. It’s something that’s so small compared to the situations that nurses, grocery store clerks, and the elderly are handling, and I hope everyone realizes that young people do understand how minimal some of our issues are compared to the much grander scheme of things.
That being said, there is a lack of closure for seniors. We have worked incredibly hard to get to this point, and now we won’t get to say goodbye. That just adds on top of the fact that we are human, so just like anybody else during this pandemic, we do have the possibility to lose people during this experience.
Like anybody else, young people are trying to stay inside, and that can take an emotional toll. I consider myself an introvert, but I’ve also had to come to terms with the fact that I need other people. As much as I enjoy staying inside on a normal basis, it has become painful some days to have so little mobility in a community and in a city that has so much to offer.
I started at Whitney Young in the academic center, which means I started there as a seventh grader. I have spent a third of my life there, so the fact that there is no closure for this part of my life is hard to handle. It’s only realistic to understand that there are people that you saw every day in high school that you may never see again. And for the class of 2020, those aren’t people that we get to say goodbye to.
I’m aware that some people are trying to understand this. I see my mom’s cousins and my parents’ friends posting their graduation pictures on Facebook as a symbol to aid the class of 2020. But the reality is that seeing that the people before us had a graduation doesn’t help the fact that we don’t.
This is a hard situation for everyone; for some more than others. It may seem minimal, but losing a large part of our senior year does find a way to make a hard situation even harder. As much as our loved ones want to help us, there is nothing that anybody can do to help. All we can do is follow the suggestions that experts are making so that one day we can come back together with other people.
