Yahoo Finance Missing Milestones: An in-person end to the weirdest high school senior year ever
In a stuffy, humid hallway at Frankfort High School, Macy Dungan, 17, dabbed sweat from her forehead, untangled the graduation cords draped over her neck and straightened her cap.
In cursive letters on top, she’d taped the words, “Onto the next chapter,” but the “e” in the “the” had slipped off. One of her friends noticed and helped her reapply it. Macy stood in an alphabetized line, along with the rest of the graduating seniors, waiting for her cue. The cue that meant their in-person graduation ceremony, in jeopardy for so many months because of COVID-19, was finally starting.
Guidance counselor Jessica Harley checked her watch. “You all got nine minutes. Are you ready?” she asked, reminding them, “Tassels on the right!”
It was late May, and one of the first sticky-hot days of early summer. The air conditioning inside the historic building had already malfunctioned. Students alternately fanned themselves with pieces of paper, while others took turns standing in front of the industrial-sized fan teachers had dragged into the hallway. No one was masked — most students and virtually all teachers were vaccinated. Less than two weeks earlier, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Gov. Andy Beshear said it was safe for fully-vaccinated Kentuckians to take off their masks around others for the first time in almost a year.
The education of K-12 students everywhere in Kentucky was in some way disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, which roiled the state, infecting hundreds of thousands and killing nearly 7,200 people. Separate from the tragedy wrought by the devastating disease, coronavirus made life weird for high school students across Kentucky in a million, smaller ways. For Macy, who let the Herald-Leader shadow her senior year, so many carefree moments of teenagerdom suddenly morphed into calculated risks that might spread the virus to her family and friends. The virus was a chaperone that never left her side; she was allowed to go through the motions of her senior year, but it was a lot less fun.
Ms. Harley mouthed silently and gestured with her hand, “Five minutes.”
Behind Macy, a boy stuffed a handheld fan under his graduation robe for a cool reprieve. In front of her, a girl used her iPhone as a mirror to fluff her hair and apply lipstick. A teacher helped another student unjam his robe zipper. “My stomach is turning!” one of Macy’s softball teammates said.
The first few chords of “Pomp and Circumstance” could be heard outside. Ms. Harley motioned them to begin walking. “Here we go. Work it, y’all” another girl said.
The senior class quieted down and walked out into the early evening sun, around the corner of the school and into view of hundreds of family members and friends seated on the front lawn.
It was Frankfort High’s first in-person graduation since 2019; last year’s ceremony was canceled because of the pandemic. Months before this day in May, when school administrators were deciding whether an in-person senior prom and graduation would even be possible — at the time, gatherings across Kentucky were limited to 10 or fewer people — they reached an agreement with the local school board: if it happened at all, it had to be outside.
Deliberations like this defined Macy’s senior year. Like most other schools in Kentucky, the 2020-2021 school year began virtually before gradually transitioning to in-person. Events and rituals that would otherwise color her final year in high school were doused, canceled entirely or unfolding, instead, over a computer screen. By May, spread of the virus had receded enough for teachers to feel safe hosting some of the first in-person events of the school year, just as it was ending.
“Going into this year, we didn’t really think we were going to get a graduation,” Macy said. “We didn’t think we were going to get a lot of what we got.”
Graduation punctuated a week of in-person festivities, beginning with prom, which Macy attended with her boyfriend, Nate, and culminating in the end-of-the-year ceremony. What’s colloquially known at FHS as Cry Day preceded graduation. Students used the stage and sound system set up for the ceremony to regale their classmates with tales of the last four years — half of which they spent learning from home because of coronavirus. Most end up crying during their speeches.
Seniors have to turn in what they plan to say ahead of time for teacher approval. Some veer from the script, knowing it’s their last chance to speak freely without a teacher telling them to quiet down or to stop cursing.
A few students leaned into this freedom and bared all. One of Macy’s classmates thanked a teacher for letting him cheat last year and another for letting him procrastinate. A girl asked her fellow Drama Club members to “please, not let [the club] go to hell” next year. Another girl came out to her mom as bisexual to loud cheers from her classmates.
Because the pandemic kept students sequestered in their homes for so long, the final week of school was the first time many had seen one another all year. It was a reunion of sorts, simultaneous firsts and lasts. As one sophomore put it during Cry Day, apologetically through tears, “You and the graduating class before you have had one of the hardest senior years where barely anything was normal,” she said. “But you are sitting here in front of me today, about to graduate tonight. And that is an accomplishment within itself.”
The finality of her weird, pandemic senior year first hit Macy the morning of graduation.
“It became real when we all got there, when we were in our caps and gowns. And they loaded us up on a hot bus, took us to the Capitol. We took a picture in front of the Capitol, and we loaded back up, and I was sitting with my friends on the bus, and we were looking around, like, ‘Guys, we’re about to graduate,’” she said. “We were kind of freaking out.”
Droves of family and friends filled the front lawn and spilled onto the surrounding streets as the soon-to-be grads took their seats. Students and alumni were honored, speeches were given, diplomas were distributed and awards were announced. Macy won the Murray Street Cup, voted on by teachers and awarded to the senior female student who most exemplifies Frankfort High’s community and academic ideals. Macy plans to attend Centre College to study biology.
Though this year wasn’t what she’d envisioned as a freshman, it was valuable. Learning virtually foists so much more responsibility on the student, for instance. “Learning Calculus virtually was probably one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. Do I wish we’d had a normal year? Yes,” she said. “But in the circumstances we were in, that was probably the best thing for us.”
As the sun set behind the school, and the ceremony neared the end, Frankfort Independent Schools Superintendent Houston Barber took the stage to carry seniors across the final threshold.
“Graduates, please rise,” Dr. Barber said to shouts from the audience. “At this time, graduates you may move your tassels from the right to the left. This accomplishment marks a great milestone in your life.”
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