S.K., Class of 2020

Right now I am about to officially graduate high school. Next year I will be taking a gap year. Though I’ve been considering taking a gap year since last summer, my plans were pretty significantly altered by COVID-19 in two main ways. First, I was very on the fence about whether or not to take a gap year, and since the major impacts of COVID-19 my desire to take a gap year solidified. I decided that a gap year made the most sense, not only because I wanted to take the opportunity to catch my breath and take a break from school, but also because I didn’t want to have COVID-19 mar my freshman year. My older brother’s freshman year was interrupted by COVID and from what I’ve seen it really sucks. I have already had my senior year taken away because of the pandemic and I decided I didn’t want to have even more of my education experiences to be taken away because of COVID. Additionally, the gap year plans that I did have have also been changed significantly by COVID because, though I originally planned to spend most if not all of my gap year traveling or working outside of the country, what my year will probably look like now is working in SLP for most if not all of it. 

I think that, at least for a while, everyone will just appreciate social interaction and gathering more. I think people will generally be more paranoid about handwashing and other similar measures against COVID that have become a habit. I also think that the economic impacts will be pretty extreme, though I don’t know enough about the economy to really be able to predict anything more specific.

Submitted June 1, 2020.