When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools in March, the Class of 2020 entered uncharted territory.

Faced with refocusing their studies to distance learning and the cancellation of school activities, this year’s crop of seniors has had to deal with circumstances that no other graduating class has encountered.

For many seniors, a sense of sadness set in as they realized their chances of a “normal” senior year had evaporated.

“It’s a pretty sad feeling. It’s tough to go to school for 12-plus years and not have a final goodbye,” Mid-Prairie senior Abigail Frantz said. “The Class of 2020 won’t remember their senior skip day, senior prom or monumental graduation week.”

Lone Tree senior Abby Buckman said that, at first, she was OK with the school closure.

“Once the closures got extended, and we later learned about the cancellation of the rest of the school year, I was in shock and angry,” Buckman said. “I was very upset that not only my classmates and I were going to miss some of the biggest moments in high school, but that I wasn’t going to be able to walk down those hallways again as a normal student.”

Hillcrest Academy senior Kobe Borntrager said that the school closure brought no closure to his school career.

“The main thing that I am disappointed about is that it feels like there’s not going to be any real sense of closure,” Borntrager said. “We do not know how we are going to do graduation yet, but we all know it is not going to be like a normal graduation.

“After four years of high school, graduation is something that I looked forward to. It’s the idea of finishing high school and being rewarded for that, and then being able to move into the next chapter of my life.”

Shaylon Graber, a senior at Pathway Christian School, expressed his frustration with the situation.

“My senior year has gone completely off track since the pandemic,” Graber said. “Completing school work has become much harder. My first track season ended before it began with only two weeks of practice before shutting down.”

All of the students have had to adapt to finishing their classes online.

“I miss going to school every day and seeing all my friends and teachers, but the staff has done a great job of keeping the classes connected,” Mid-Prairie senior Abbi Patterson said. “It has been an interesting change to digital learning, but many of the staff and students have been very open minded about it.”

Another Mid-Prairie senior, Brody Miller, said he had to become more organized.

“It’s been more challenging to keep track of when meetings are happening,” Miller said. “It’s not like school where we show up to school and go to class. We have to remember and keep track of when meetings are and when class work is due.

“I’ve had to create a calendar to write out due dates and meeting times.”

Hillcrest Academy was one of the first schools to start mandatory online learning.

“I feel fortunate that we started doing online learning a week after quarantine began,” Hillcrest senior Mia Graber said. “It helped smooth the adjustment for all of us.”

Pathway, too, made online learning mandatory, and Shaylon Graber admitted that it has been a struggle for him.

“To adapt to online learning, I have organized my computer and phone and have learned to focus outside the classroom,” he said. “Pathway has made this quarantine very difficult, having had the full workload due since they sent us home. It’s hard to really be in touch with your teacher without them being able to hand your corrected work back.”

Lone Tree opted to keep online learning voluntary, which presented challenges of its own.

Buckman said that motivation has been an issue with the voluntary work.

“Even learning has been difficult to stay motivated for when everything else has been affected,” she said. “Although I have been keeping up with my AP and college classes just fine, other classes are harder to stay on top of when they are not required.

“At school it can be easier to stay focused when there aren’t as many other demands, but while at home, I can work on homework while also doing some housework and finding other priorities.”

The upheaval of their senior year has given some of the seniors a greater appreciation for what they have.

“We just need to try and keep a good attitude about things and trust that we’ll get out of it soon,” Miller said. “These are the times that remind us to be thankful for the things that we sometimes look past.”

Buckman said, “If there is one thing I’ve learned through all this craziness though, it’s to not take for granted the things that you have. Whether it’s your homework that you sometimes don’t want to do, the family, friends, teachers, and people you get to see every day, or the place that you learn to be comfortable in, everything can be taken away.”

Patterson said, “I never expected my senior year to end like this, but it has allowed me to appreciate the experiences I had so much more.”

Borntrager took a philosophical approach to the situation.

“One thing that I have realized throughout all of this is that although it is unfortunate that this happened during my senior year, it had to happen to some senior class, and it just so happened to be my senior year,” he said.