By Matthew King
Granite State News Collaborative
On Friday, June 12th, the Berlin High School Class of 2020 moved their tassels from right to left and officially graduated. I was fortunate enough to be a part of that ceremony.
A global pandemic was far from the first hardship that my class faced. Our class was notorious for not being able to stand each other. Both the class ahead and the one behind outshined us, and we wore the role of the forgotten middle child well, whether we wanted to admit it or not. Even before our senior year started, the district closed one of its two elementary schools and moved the middle school students into the high school building, due to budget constraints, turning it into a middle/high school.
It seemed like we were always, and I mean always, handed the short end of the stick.
However, the Coronavirus was certainly the most unprecedented challenge of them all. There’s no doubt that 2020 has been too much for one person to wrap their head around. Nonetheless, these last few months have taught me something valuable; something you don’t realize until the moment has passed— you should not take anything for granted.
High school scared me as a freshman. It still does. People are put in situations, both academically and socially, that test how well they handle pressure. Some of this challenge is necessary for our growth, but between prolonged hours of restriction, outdated methods of teaching, and unreasonable curriculums, many of these challenges are damaging students. It’s no wonder that student performance in reading and math has remained stagnant since the year 2000.
My last day of high school was on a sunny afternoon in March. My Ancient Civilizations teacher joked with us about the virus, and we were all making predictions as to when our school would close. It didn’t matter, we thought— it would reopen in a couple of weeks.
The fact that life came to a standstill in such a short amount of time was frightening, as well as disappointing. After all, Berlin High School had three separate teams about to play their championship games just before COVID-19 took over. I worried that our sense of community would be destroyed, and making those connections that stick with us throughout our lives would be halted.
Needless to say, I had quite the pessimistic attitude at graduation--my oficial final day as a high school senior. Despite being one of the only schools in the state hosting an in-person ceremony, I was convinced that I would feel the same if my diploma was mailed to me and then just simply moved on with my life. It’s an attractive mindset considering we left so abruptly and never got to finish strong.
But— less than half an hour before the graduation ceremony began—I noticed something. Despite half of our faces being covered by masks, our eyes were still visible, and they were filled with determination. The more I looked out across the field, the more I saw it. It was too soon for us to put the challenges that our education system presented us with behind us, but we could finally begin to learn, heal, and grow from it. It was a small victory— so small compared to everything else, that it almost didn’t feel like much of a victory at all. But nonetheless, we did it, and that was worth celebrating.
It didn’t matter that my sash nearly got swept up by the wind, or that the sun almost burned a hole into one of my graduation gifts— what did matter were our final moments together, in unison, especially when many didn’t have that luxury. Perhaps one good thing to come out of COVID-19 is recognizing the value of a moment rather than the event itself.
[Matthew King is a graduate of Berlin High School and an intern with The Granite State News Collaborative.]
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