I am a Class of 2020 graduate. I never expected anything better.

I’ll admit, no one could have predicted the specifics, but I never had a chance for a traditional

graduation and a fun prom. It would not have made sense for there to be a normal end to the year; it

would not have fit with the theme. 

I see stories online every day “in honor of the seniors.” There are discounts and free things for

the seniors on every corner. Every parent I know has changed their Facebook profile picture to

#Classof2020strong. There is a huge banner outside of my school with all the students names on it.

All of this feels just a bit overkill. I mean, we’re not dead. It sucks, I am taking full advantage of free

offerings, but I want to ask why. You don’t apologize to the ground for being rained on. It was always

going to happen. They say at graduation that everything has been leading to this. If this were true,

we should have seen this coming from a mile away. 

At recess in elementary school, I would get anxious watching planes I believed to be low-flying

pass over the sky. I never really understood 2008’s financial crisis, since I was six and no one bothered to explain it to me in years following. I was part of the first class to receive instruction from confused teachers on how to click a bubble instead of completely filling it in with a number two

pencil. I had to hear friends talk about how their parents weren’t making money anymore since the

government had shut down. 

My freshman year of high school, Donald Trump was elected president. Fourteen years old, I was

not yet old enough to have a say, not that that stopped anyone in my entire four-thousand-student

school from voicing their opinion. Mock polls were held in classes, much to the chagrin of teachers

who would like us to please get back to work. Halloween saw hallways of Trumps, Melanias, and

border police. A bad impression of Trump could be counted on in any situation, and a day wouldn’t

be a day without a badly photoshopped meme of something he’d said. 

That summer, neo-nazis ignited Charlottesville. I watched through Twitter updates as Trump spoke

the infamous “very good people.” People were disappointed, disgusted, but I never expected any

better from him. I had no reason to expect decency from this man, and every event that unfolded

seemed to have already been written neatly in history books. 

When I was a sophomore, seventeen people were killed in Parkland. I watched the speeches and

protests from the kids fighting back. I walked out and marched for our lives. I went to school terrified

every day, silently monitoring every classroom for a hiding place or escape route. And we didn’t

come out of it with gun violence solved, of course. Nothing I had lived through had given me the right

to expect anything better. 

When I was a junior, I watched the midterm elections occur with a glint of hope, but still no voice. I

followed the Muller investigation and did by best to understand every report that came out. A class

discussion of civil rights that was supposed to be about the 60s quickly turned to the recent abortion

bans. 

Senior year was when things really went down. I followed live updates on the impeachment

proceedings in class, flipping over to the tab with the assignment when the teacher walked past. I

always expected something big to go down my senior year: it was the series finale, after all. I just

thought that we were done after the impeachment. 

I voted for the first time just about a week before my school shut down. 

My last day of high school ever was Thursday, May 28. I woke up to the news that the United States

had reached 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus. I logged into my classes. I watched protests over

the murder of George Floyd escalate. Teachers and students cried over Zoom, mourning that we

weren’t able to do any of the goodbyes in person. I signed online petitions. I said goodbye to my

classmates. I committed to college. I read the news. 

I have never expected anything from the government, and that is the problem. In virtual

commencements, my generation has been told repeatedly that we are the future, but the future has

never been terribly bright. We’re trying to speak out, but we’re burning out. We need proof that our

voices have an impact, that something will become of us, because we can’t keep yelling without any

real hope that someone will listen.