There were a lot of things I looked forward to my senior year of high school:
making every day seem like the weekend, dancing at prom, playing my heart out on the ISSMA competition stage and wearing the blue cap and gown. I had spent the first three years of high school strung up about academics, with countless hours of studying and completing homework that I knew when senior year rolled around, I needed to unwind and make the most out of it.

Senior year was supposed to be my year. 

Up until March, I was enjoying my time as a senior. I had started planning my spring break in December, spent an absurd amount of class time browsing through images of prom dresses all while counting down the days until I had to say goodbye. 

When the district decided to shut down schools for an indefinite time period, like every other senior, I felt as though I was being robbed of my final year. At first, I was frustrated by these preventative measures to contain the COVID-19 virus. There was probably going to be no prom, no ISSMA, and no graduation ceremony. I spent hours sobbing over the fact that my senior year was cut short; how everything senior-related was snatched out of my hands due to unprecedented force. 

Sitting in my bed for about a week with little social interaction, I have had time to reflect over the situation. And while I am furious of the events which will most likely end up on the 2032 AP U.S. History Exam, I realized how fluid life is. 

Events like prom and the graduation ceremony seem set in stone from the moment you start high school. We assume that prom is going to happen because it always has.  We assume that there will be a point in time where we walk across the stage in our blue cap and gown to shake the hands of administrators because graduation has always been a thing. 

As terrible as the COVID-19 situation has become, without it, I would have never realized how much we take life for granted. We expect all of these things to happen in our lives— things that are not necessary to survive yet we value as much as our lives. Events like prom and the graduation ceremony are so trivial, yet it took a pandemic to see that. 

While it is normal to mourn the abrupt end of senior year, there comes a time where we need to move on. As fluid as life is, there is no time to dwell on what has already happened. We are already 10 paces behind the marathon of life, and for us to take control over the situation, we need to catch up.

Take the COVID-19 situation as a re-evaluation of how we catch what life throws at us. We can only control what we know, and by taking things one step at a time, we’ll be able to get through situations like these together. Let’s be grateful for the moments that we have today instead of worrying about what is to come tomorrow.

And who knows? Maybe prom on the Club Penguin dance floor might not be so bad after all.

The views in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the HiLite staff. Reach Natalie Khamis at [email protected].