We may not have to duck under our desks to dodge potential missiles, but I can bet that this school year will be one worthy for its own pages in a 2040 textbook and a three hour cautionary documentary.

Currently I am in a state of limbo, shafted somewhere between a focused senior and an already graduated, college-focused freshman. As announced last week, the entirety of my state will not be going back to school. Luckily for me, I don’t need to have the structure of going inside a building to learn nor the need for an escape from my household; however, many of my peers are not so fortunate.

All of this morning I was working on selecting my housing and meal plan for my upcoming year at Spelman College (Spelbound!), reading Lord of the Rings, enjoying the sun, and planning out my second book. The first morning of my spring break–which felt unearned but still greatly appreciated–was as productive as it was fulfilling.

Though I do have more time to do all the things I would never have done if this quarantine was not put in place, there are still many drawbacks. My school was thoughtful enough to plan many events for seniors, and we will have our prom and graduation in the last week of July. These postponed celebrations, before we knew they would be rescheduled, did dampen the spirits of most of the graduating class, myself included. There were other negative aspects. I have an urge to text my friends to come over and hang out, but then I realize they can’t. There is also that feeling of unresolved tension in our spirits; we won’t be learning inside the walls of our school again, we won’t be high school students when we see our school again. That’s a pretty tough thing to hear no matter how much of a school-skipping slacker someone is. This was out of our control.  

I took it much easier than a lot of the other seniors. I was somewhat pleased at first to find out that I could spend more time at home getting things done. But when I got the news that we would no longer be going to school at all and would have to do it all online, a weird amalgamation of sadness and disappointment formed within me.

Overall I don’t have much to complain about. That sense of melancholy has since vanished over the past few days. I am healthy, hard-working, and committed to being positive during such a catastrophic, once in a lifetime piece of history. Look back at this time in the future with pride in how you handled the cluster of frantic emotions, the bombardment of real and fake news, and the great disappointment (at the very best) of what the unexpected can do to those with everything to expect.

~

Thank you for reading, and I hope all of you are safe and cared for :))

I will be posting more about college in the next few days, so follow me if you’d like to be a part of this weird, wild journey! If you haven’t already, please give my book Accursed Red a sample read (it’s a pretty short book, so it’s perfect to ease your quarantine boredom!) on Amazon! Hello and hello, and I hope to see you tomorrow. 

~ Sammicakes