From left to right: Seniors Meta Zhou, Sneha Sinha, Natalie Varma and Bailey Noble wear their caps to get free Insomnia Cookies, a promotion for the graduating class. Photo courtesy of Meta Zhou.
For senior Meta Zhou, who lives with her grandma and spent most of the pandemic unable to go inside a grocery store, getting vaccinated marked a dramatic uptick in a strange and dampened final year of high school.
“I went to Target yesterday for the first time in like, forever,” Zhou said. “The rest of my family’s been vaccinated so we’re kind of loosening up a little bit, kind of going to just CDC guidelines as opposed to doing more than CDC guidelines.”
The trend resonates with many others as well with Orange County’s positive COVID-19 test rate falling under one percent and around half of the county population becoming fully vaccinated as of May 15. For some, this means being able to see friends and family for the first time in over a year.
“The last two or three weeks, the world’s coming back to life, you know, because it’s spring now,” senior Will Tyndall said. “Everything’s blooming and people can actually go outside and so many of my friends are vaccinated, that I barely have to worry about [COVID-19] anymore. My family’s vaccinated, so I don’t have to worry about them. I saw my grandma for the first time in over a year last week.”
With almost three-quarters of their senior year spent virtually, many seniors found themselves suddenly transitioning from being a junior to a near-high school graduate. Some haven’t even stepped foot in the school building since March 2020. Even with the option for in-person school added this March, under a third of seniors chose to return to campus.
Some, like Tyndall, came to the realization that March 13, 2020 may have been the last time they’d see some of their peers, as not all seniors plan to attend an in-person graduation event and they move on to separate colleges.
“There are definitely people who I’ve been in class with since Ms. Pace’s kindergarten class, who I will genuinely never see again in my life,” Tyndall said. ”There’s so many school friends [who] you don’t hang out with outside of school, but they’re still important people in your lives.”
The loss of some connections is undeniable, but small victories came for the seniors upon the mid-April announcements of an in-person prom June 5 and a graduation ceremony June 12. Although both events will be staggered and socially distanced, they mark the first times seniors have the opportunity to gather together as the Class of 2021.
“I had [a dress] that I was looking at, because I heard they were planning to do something and then [the store was] having a flash 50 percent off sale [on the website], and I was like, ‘Okay, this is a sign from the universe,’ and I got it,” Zhou said. “Then like an hour later, they came out with all the prom stuff. I was like, ‘Incredible, this is perfect timing.’”
Prom and graduation are both events Principal Ken Proulx said he knew he hoped to offer the seniors, but were up in the air until recently as the district worked to make it happen. Now that it’s confirmed, rain or shine, the seniors will be dancing the evening away in the student parking lot.
“I’m so excited to see people again, even if it’s lame, even if it’s different. I don’t care. This is so much more than I had hoped for,” Zhou said.
Previous years of graduating classes may have taken prom and graduation as a given, but as Zhou recognized, they mark a significant moment of closure in an otherwise inconclusive year of high school.
Typically, this time of year is also a fun time for seniors to share their future plans with their peers and teachers. At school, seniors might wear their college’s t-shirt on May 1 or simply ask their peers in class. This year, seniors have shifted to other means to find out.
“We didn’t immediately know where everyone was going because you can’t just talk to people in class, or you can’t send someone a private message on Google Meet and ask where they’re going,” Tyndall said. “So it’s been fun seeing people post on Instagram and stuff.”
There has been a student-run Instagram account called @echhsseniors2021 where seniors can send in their future plans for next year, and their peers can share in their accomplishments.
Proulx says he hopes graduating seniors can “use this year as a learning experience” in preparation for their future, knowing that if they made it through this year, they can make it through anything else thrown at them.
Despite the tumultuous year, this year’s seniors look forward to the future, rather than lingering on any regrets.
“Obviously I wish we had a normal senior year, but in a pandemic, nothing was going to change that,” Tyndall said.
