What are your feelings these days as the TASIS school year has been suspended for the high school?
It is incredibly difficult to understand the full extent of what is going on in our society today due to COVID-19. Most if not all of the world is suffering from problems due to the virus in their unique way. High school seniors around the world are suffering from the loss of the last three months of what is supposed the best year of their lives. All seniors can relate to this.
TASIS is an extraordinary place with endless opportunities, and it has something for everyone regardless of where you come from; it is our community, and it is most importantly our home and a safe space for the students to be themselves. I know that I am incredibly grateful and fortunate to have spent the last year and a half attending TASIS. I understand the situation could be a lot worse, and it’s not the end of the world that we aren’t able to finish up our last year of high school on campus. However, I am still upset that I will not be able to wake up again and look out the window and see the gorgeous view of the sun over the lake or walking down the Lanterna steps and seeing all of campus and all of Lugano for miles ahead.
I am saddened that the community, although still, a community will not be able to come together one last time. I lost the ability to be able to walk across the stage in my white dress and to shake Mr. Nikoloff’s hand and accepting my diploma. I have waited twelve years of hard work, and COVID-19 took away the opportunity for me to celebrate it in person with the class of 2020 who has also worked exceptionally hard to receive their diplomas. We won’t have our senior prom or senior banquet. We don’t even get to sit in the Palmer as a class ever again.
We the class of 2020 are grieving the loss of months we could’ve been spending with friends who will be going away to university in the fall; grieving the loss of walking across campus or down to Sarah Lee’s, grieving the loss of the last few months of our senior year, a year we worked so incredibly hard for and during but also a year we all looked forward to. So to the class of 2020, although it sucks, make the most of the rest of senior year facetime your friends, spend extra time with your favorite teacher on zoom, look at the pictures of our beautiful campus, and try to connect with one another. We will be together again whether that be at a reunion or just a weird coincidence bumping into a peer on the street. The TASIS community is always there for us.
So although COVID 19 took away the end of what we thought our senior year was supposed to look like remember all the fantastic times we had this year, last year as many years as you were at TASIS and treasure them, I know I do.