Zoom memories: Two Granite Bay high school students recall a senior year like no other

Whoever said that senior year is the funnest part of high school was a liar. Or at least no psychic.

To be fair, no one expected senior year to be like this either. We thought we would spend the majority of this year bonding with our classmates as we prepared for our paths to diverge, but instead — in a year of pandemic and remote learning — we’ve never felt more disconnected from our peers.

At the beginning of the school year, we remember still feeling the annual first-day-of-school jitters as we logged into our first synchronous online classes, but the usual fears this time were different.

Instead of wondering how we would find the right classroom and make a good impression on the teacher, we feared our internet not working or not being able to hold a normal conversation in a breakout room.

Whenever we logged into Zoom, it didn’t feel like being in class; we felt detached watching toned down, expressionless versions of our vibrant classmates.

The class clowns had no opportunity to crack jokes, the overachievers had to somewhat awkwardly interrupt the teacher to ask their questions and the rest of us were floating heads, sitting and rarely speaking.

The personalities of each student were unrecognizable behind the blank faces in every square.

Everyone had to be muted unless speaking in order to filter out random, distracting background noise. But that also seemed to deter engagement. Why make noise? Why make the effort to click “unmute” to ask for clarification? Better — easier — to just sit quietly in the reality of Zoom, where it’s much harder to feel guilty about not participating because the teacher is miles away.

As the months rolled by, Granite Bay High School gave the opportunity for students to either remain completely online or engage in a hybrid schedule, in which they would come into school alternating days of the week. For concern over safety, we decided to remain online.

In the beginning of the hybrid schedule’s introduction, we felt satisfied with our choice because it felt like the safest option. The sad thing is that a part of us also didn’t want to go back. It felt great to roll out of bed right before class, wear pajamas, and turn off the camera when doing other things.

The lack of accountability in Zoom felt like a reward. But in hindsight it wasn’t. We would sit in front of the computer feeling freedom, but truth is the lack of oversight only made us antisocial, lazy and uncaring.

We also didn’t need to worry about the weekly school notifications that would signify the COVID-19 cases for the previous week. In fact, although we are reluctant to admit this, we remember feeling almost eager to click on that weekly message to find out how many people had tested positive.

We wanted a reason to feel good about our choice to remain online, to not feel regretful, so we could focus on that instead of what we were really missing: physical connections with our friends and classmates.

With all the free time that came from constantly being at home and the lack of hope for a normal senior year, our minds were mostly focused on the future.

We fixated on the colleges we were applying to at an almost unhealthy level. Watching YouTube videos of current university students, checking our admissions portals and imagining ourselves walking through campuses as we saw them on 3-D maps.

This helped us figure out which schools were a good fit for us and gave us a good understanding of each campus’s culture. At least that’s what we tell ourselves so we don’t feel like we wasted all that time. All that time spent staring at a screen for more hours than could have possibly have been healthy.

We couldn’t escape the daily headaches after days full of Zoom calls, and the long hours filled with homework and college applications.

In April, we made the decision to return to campus, partly because our families were now vaccinated and partly because the aspects of online learning that had once appeared beneficial now seemed purely detrimental to our well-being. We were nervous at first, for our health, but also for seeing the hundreds of peers that we hadn’t interacted with in over a year.

Yet, after that first day, it felt like nothing had changed. We were shocked to realize how deprived and isolated we truly had been at home.

Even just seeing our small, close-knit circle of friends everyday brought us happiness and a sense of normalcy that we didn’t realize was missing.

That’s not to say that we wish we would’ve returned sooner than we did. We did what was safest for us and our families, and we don’t regret that. Yet, we still feel a sense of loss for all the time wasted over the course of our online learning experience.

It had never truly dawned on us how fast time really flies. You think you have all the time in the world ... until you don’t.

Time often acts as a metal sculpture that is already cool to the touch, already past the point of being reshaped, once we think to hold it in our hands. There are very few moments where we have the opportunity to shape time ourselves.

That’s what we’re trying to do now: remelt time so that we have the space for all the memories we were meant to make. Before college begins, all we can do is try to cram in every moment before the opportunity is gone.