The Senior Year That Wasn’t: Fatima

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Many of us would agree that our Senior year of High School was one of the most memorable years of our life. Between graduation, college acceptance letters, Prom, and the knowledge that it’s the last year spent in your hometown (and parents’ house no less), it’s a time that we both never want to end, and can’t get past soon enough. Unfortunately, for the class of 2020, most of these traditions were devastated by COVID-19. In this series, we chat with Seniors to find out the extent of the impact to their final year of High School and what they’ve done to salvage those memories.

Meet Fatima, a 16-year-old from Azerbaijan who’s finishing her year at Beijing Number 55 High School.

Can you briefly walk us through how COVID-19 has evolved for you, personally?

This outbreak really affected me. At first I thought it was just an annual flu, I didn’t think it was a big deal, but then I found out that a lot of people are losing their lives because of this coronavirus, so for our health, we need to be quarantined at home, and stay safe. I was a person who liked to stay at home. I sometimes would be very lazy to go out, but since the outbreak, I found it’s difficult to stay at home, and sometimes feel very strange. Beijing these days doesn’t even have cars on the streets, and this also caused Beijing to have better air quality.

This outbreak has also affected me academically. I thought we would have normal school, but as time passed, the outbreak became more and more severe, school was delayed, and we had no way to go to school, so we can only do online classes for our studies.

Senior year of High School is supposed to be one of the most memorable years of your life. Unfortunately however, you and your peers aren’t getting to enjoy all that it has to offer. Can you tell us a bit about that? What are the conversations that are happening amongst your friends right now?

It’s a great pity that we can’t see each other in our senior year of high school, we can only contact each other with WeChat and other social media platforms. The most recent conversations I’ve had with my friends is Prom and the graduation trip. We’ve been planning where our Prom is going to be, what kind of dress to wear, and where we can plan to go out for our trip. But we don’t know yet whether these activities will carry on properly. I hope the virus will go away soon, and we can meet each other as soon as possible.

What activities were you most looking forward to this year that have either been postponed or canceled? Prom, graduation ceremony, etc.

I don’t know when we’re going to start school yet, but the last thing I want to be postponed and canceled is the Prom. Whether it is Junior High School graduation or Senior High School graduation, students will always hold a Prom, which has become a traditional activity in our school. If the graduation ceremony because of the outbreak was canceled, I will be very sad.

I am also looking forward to the graduation ceremony. I believe that one of a students’ greatest wishes is to throw their hat in the graduation ceremony, and I hope that this year our classmates can throw a graduation hat. I am also very much looking forward to the graduation trip between our friends. This will be my first trip with friends to other countries, so I very much hope that by then the virus will see a very big improvement, so we can all do these activities for graduation.

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Has COVID-19 affected your ability to graduate at all? Are you able to take all the necessary High School Exit Exams, College Placement Tests, etc.

Overall this outbreak won’t affect my graduation and university interview. IB canceled their exams in May this year because of COVID-19, but they will still give us our certificates depending on our work. Our school grades will also be based on our homework and coursework, to give us the corresponding results as graduation test results.

College entrance exams will be using video calls for interviews, so this outbreak won’t affect my overall graduation and entrance exams.

Has COVID-19 affected your plans for after graduation? If so, how? Were you planning on going abroad for college? Doing a bit of traveling during the Summer? Etc.

COVID-19 really affected my life after graduation. I originally wanted to travel abroad with my family and friends during the Summer vacation, but now have to consider whether this virus will be resolved, and if the trip will be delayed or not. So I don’t have an accurate answer yet. I will not go abroad to go to college, I will continue to go to college in Beijing.

Despite all that has happened this year, have you done anything to try and salvage these last few months of your High School experience? Have you and your friends been able to “hang out” on Zoom or FaceTime? Have you made backup plans for a Prom in case it gets officially canceled?

My friends and I have been chatting on social media during the outbreak, like WeChat and Instagram, and we only talk about where we could hold a Prom if there was one, but we haven’t talked about where we could hold it if it was canceled. I think we’re going to end up hosting our high school Prom indoors.

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Photos: Courtesy of Fatima, Pixabay, Unsplash

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