As a graduating senior in the class of 2024, I was a freshman during the Covid-19 year. There have been many discussions among my peers that this has affected our class’s school spirit, and high school experience as a whole. I find myself agreeing with this idea wholeheartedly. My older brother, who was in the class of 2021, had always thought that the environment of the high school had shifted after his freshman year, in 2017. This was many years prior to the pandemic, but was a shift nonetheless.
The adults in my life, too, explain that times are different now than when they were in school, and that their childhood must have been much better than ours. I believe that they are absolutely correct. I find that usually, as times change, so do our values and ideas. That will always cause a shift in how young people live.
However, times have changed because these adults are no longer teenagers. Since we are teenagers now, we must live in a way that better suits the experiences we have gone through. While I truly believe that we should listen to older generations for advice and input, they have not gone through a global pandemic during their maturing years.
This is not to say that our generation has been through more. The generation before us witnessed the attacks of 9/11 live on television, for example. The reality is, when a generation is faced with events that change the structure of the world, they will behave differently than the generations before.
An example of this idea in history would be the hippie movement that spurred from the Vietnam war. Many older generations looked down on the hippies, but they were not drafted to fight overseas, so how could they understand?
Therefore, I believe that it is important to realize that every generation will see the world very differently. Every generation has something in common, however; our lives are shaped by the events that occur when we are growing up. So it is important to respect the views that differ across generations, whether they be younger or older.
It is valuable to respect our own outlooks as well. In many ways, we lag behind due to [COVID-19]. There are aspects that we excel at, though, because of this time. I don’t think it is a bad thing to let this define us. Having a pandemic during high school certainly has affected the way we see the world, but it isn’t something that we have to necessarily view as a challenge to overcome. Maybe it would benefit all of us to appreciate the common change that we have all experienced these past few years.
