‘Nothing’s the same’: High school seniors come to terms with coronavirus closures
For May River High School senior Kendall Knighten, graduation meant the chance to see family from her native Louisiana “for one day.”
It meant that a month prior, she’d be going to prom with her friends. It meant a senior trip to Europe she’d been looking forward to all year. It meant that soon, she’d be getting an apartment with friends to attend Technical College of the Lowcountry.
Now, it means only uncertainty.
“Everything we have looked forward to is just being thrown away, in a sense,” Knighten said. “And they’re talking about having a virtual graduation. Nothing’s the same.”
Life has changed dramatically for all of Beaufort County School District’s 22,000-plus students as they begin their second month of remote learning mandated by Gov. Henry McMaster.
All their classes have gone online until at least May 1, and the district’s free meal pickups are the only reason students have to visit their schools.
But for Knighten, the biggest change is not knowing whether she’ll get closure on the last four years of school.
“I’ve lost all motivation, in a way,” she said. “I wake up, it’s like, OK, time to start the day all over again.”
Her friend Samantha Foster, also a May River senior, agrees.
When schools were closed, she was prepping for a SkillsUSA competition in Greenville for her law enforcement class, one that could have “opened a lot of doors” and netted her a scholarship, she said.
“The first week we didn’t realize how bad it was,” Foster said. “I mean, neither did our families. We were going out to the beach, we were staying over at each other’s houses all the time. And then I came home and my mom and dad are like, ‘you cannot go out any more.’”
Foster was preparing for mission trips to Puerto Rico and Alabama this summer, along with a trip with her friends before they separate for college and jobs. She’s planning to attend the University of South Carolina Beaufort, then transfer to the Columbia campus to study criminology and psychology.
Now, she said, her father is the only one who leaves the house for grocery runs and food. She said she’s gained a new appreciation for teachers by watching her mother, who works at H.E. McCracken Middle School, reach out to students.
“No teachers have ever had to do this before,” Foster said. “For my math class, as much as they’re setting up videos and everything, I’m having to teach myself how to do that now.”
And while school is closed only through the end of April so far, Foster said her teachers and friends “all suspect we will not be going back to school for the rest of the year.”
“All seniors, we just miss being able to come together and talk,” she said. “‘We’re like, well why can’t we go back? This isn’t fair to us.’ And I can’t lie, that’s how I feel, too. But it is selfish.”
Knighten said that her parents have been “really nice” in understanding her frustration with school closures. In quarantine, she and her mother are trying to plan a celebration for the end of her high school career.
“At first I didn’t want anything big or anything crazy,” she said. “But then I was like, well, I’m not getting graduation. I just want a little bit of validation to be like, ‘Hey, I did this.’”