Cécilia Lux ’20, co-Editor-in-Chief

Below is a collection of thoughts from the Class of 2020: some happy, some nostalgic, but all very valid. At a time when we are unable to communicate our opinions in person, three GA seniors wrote about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected them and the culmination of their time at GA. 

Cécilia Lux:

I’m the type of person who likes to know what’s going on. Before COVID, I read the news every day in different forms: Google News, some Twitter, a few podcasts, a handful of SNL skits, all of it contributed to my day-to-day. But, at the moment, the news panics me.

I was born exactly one week after 9/11 and I will never know a world without that pain. I remember the news stories of the school shootings, the terrorist bombings, all of it is burned into my memory. However, those news stories usually had a sense of finality to them, “this happened yesterday”, or “an hour ago” or “five minutes ago”. In our world of instant gratification, the coronavirus is a completely different kind of tragedy and we have no idea when it will end.

The inconsistency and uncertainty of today has left me feeling as if once-solid ground is shifting under me. I’ve been waiting for 2020 for as long as I can remember. Class of 2020. It’s ironic looking back how often people told me that was a “great year” just because it sounded so good. I can hear our chants from the first day ringing in my ears, “twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty”. 

There’s an added level of personal guilt as a senior. How sad am I allowed to be? I am acutely aware of how this pandemic is affecting people in significantly more severe ways and how I am still very, very lucky, but I can’t get rid of my personal sadness. 

On Zoom calls with family members and friends, I feel like people are waiting on me to deliver the speech of a politician. They want me to elegantly express my sadness about this upsetting end to my senior year, but also to recognize my luck. I am supposed to be diplomatic and logical, but I am scared, and I am angry, and nothing I would like to say is elegant.

I was supposed to graduate on May 21st. I do this thing where I leave my future self notes in my Google Calendar: there’s five on May 21, 2020, going all the way back to seventh grade. Spring is my favorite season at GA. I love seeing the cherry blossom trees and eating on the benches outside the cafeteria. I miss wearing t-shirts to class (I’m rarely in uniform, sorry, Ms. Riverain) and playing music in the empty hallways after school. I miss sitting in front of the fire in our beautiful library on rainy days trying to finish my Russian Lit reading before the period ends. I miss giggling with my friends in class and having the teacher shoot us an annoyed-but-not-really look. Today, I can’t even hug my friends. My thirteen years at Greenwich Academy ended on a random Wednesday in March and I don’t even remember it. 

I don’t have a lesson to wrap this up with, not yet anyway. I’m sure I’ll stumble upon one in a year or two, and I’ll appreciate this time for what it taught me. However, at the moment, the only thing I have to offer is my thanks: to the teachers, to my classmates, to my friends and to the doctors and nurses (including my very own aunt and GA alum Cosima Lux (‘91)!). In this impossible time, you have met this challenge with the determination and grace that defines our Greenwich Academy community. This is what I will think of when I look back on my time at GA. This is our community at our best, and as heartbreaking as it is to end my senior year without the closure I expected, I feel as if this has become our defining performance: we have been presented with impossible challenges and yet, we rise to the occasion as the strong women GA has taught us to be. 

Megan Meyerson:

The hardest part is not being able to say goodbye. I had no inkling that when we left for Spring Break that I wouldn’t come back again. It was going to be difficult to leave even with a proper Senior Spring to say goodbye to the home GA has been for three years (I can only imagine how hard it must be for the lifers), and with this truncated year, I know I will not be ready. It feels like we’ve all put in an enormous amount of work over the years only to lose the reward months when we have a moment to step back, celebrate all we’ve accomplished, and savor the friendships that allowed us to accomplish it. We got the high-school grind, but not senior spring. Maybe even more than goodbye, I wish we could say thank-you to the teachers and parents for both the everyday moments and the milestones we’ve been looking forward to for so long, and we’ve lost the best time to say it— at the end.

Isabel Allard:

I wish I had known that that Wednesday was the last time I’d ever put on a kilt. I didn’t realize how much that one piece of clothing had become my identity, how, for the past 7 years, it had become an extension of myself. Every morning, putting it on was a subconscious part of my routine, something so ingrained I didn’t think about it. Suddenly, I’ll never be able to wear it again.

That Wednesday, as we laughed about the plastic-wrapped toast, as corona-filled anxiety dominated our conversations, I had no idea that it would be my last Chef Anthony meal, my last chance to laugh in the senior room before running the path to make it to my class at the preschool.

I miss staying after class to talk to my teachers, and the little things, like random conversations in the senior room. Seeing my friends every day was something I took for granted. Now, my reality is the opposite of what I envisioned. My classroom is my bedroom, my cafeteria is my kitchen, my siblings are suddenly my only classmates. 

It’s hard to put into words just how weird it is that high school as you know it is over before a goodbye, without real closure. I’ve spent my time at GA looking at that white tent, working so hard every step of the way with the final goal of walking down that aisle in my white dress while the school looked on. I’ve spent the last four years on the crew team working to medal at New England’s just to find the whole season canceled. I feel as if the finish line has disappeared just as I was in the final lap.

I just want one more day, one more chance to put on my kilt and go to class and see my friends and my teachers and be able to say goodbye to 200 North Maple. It’s an address that I get to feel proud of every day, and I miss being there.

However, I’ve tried to appreciate all the silver linings. First and foremost, the time I get to spend with my family and our health. The way that our community has come together to help others is amazing, from making masks to running for donations. And, as I talk to seniors across the country that I’ll (hopefully!!) be going to school within the fall, I’ve seen that we all share this experience. We’re not alone, and will come to campus unified in a way that has never happened before. 

Above all, I’m so grateful to the teachers and faculty that have been working so hard to make GA work, and despite the ending, look back on my time thinking that GA truly did their job. Character = built.

I love and miss you GA. Hope to see you soon.