I Still Haven’t Decided If I’m Going Back For In-Person Senior Year
It’s 10:17 on a Sunday night, and the course registration form is still open on my laptop. The question is big and bold at the top: Full in-person or fully remote for 2024 senior year? I’ve been staring at it off and on for three days. Every time I move my cursor toward the in-person box, my thumb tenses up on the trackpad and I click away to open TikTok instead.
The other day I had to go into the building to pick up my course options list, and that’s when I remembered all the small, awful stuff I’d completely blocked out after two years of learning from home. The hallways smell like old floor wax and the burnt popcorn that someone always makes in the teacher’s lounge. The bells are so loud they make your teeth vibrate. I turned the wrong corner down the math wing and bumped straight into a freshman who was carrying a full water bottle. It spilled all over her backpack and her brand new white sneakers, and I just stood there for a second, brain completely blank, before I mumbled “so sorry” and booked it to the main office. I didn’t even stop to help her soak it up. I still think about that on the drive home. That’s how out of practice I am with being around that many people all at once.
I’ve done hybrid or fully remote since my sophomore year, after the first wave of COVID, and my routine’s really nice, honestly. I wake up at 7:45, make iced coffee in my chipped blue thrift store mug, and set up my laptop on my desk where my tabby cat Mochi can curl up on the corner of my math textbook. I can pause a lecture to grab a granola bar, or stretch my legs by walking around the backyard when I’m stuck on a calc problem. After my last class ends at 1, I have the whole afternoon to work on my college essays and the painting portfolio I’m sending to art school. If I go in person, school doesn’t get out until 3:30, and by the time I take the bus home and shower off that stale hallway smell, it’s almost five. I’d be too tired to paint, I know I would. That’s not me being dramatic, that’s just how my brain works. It gets overstimulated easy, and I’ve gotten good at working around that at home.
Everyone keeps telling me I’m being stupid, or that I’ll regret it. My mom says “it’s your last year of high school, you’re supposed to make memories.” My grandma sent me a text that said “prom is the best night of your life!” and I didn’t know how to tell her I don’t even like dancing, and my best friend Lila moved to Oregon last year anyway. The people I used to sit with at lunch? I haven’t hung out with any of them in person in over a year. We comment on each other’s Instagram posts, but that’s it. What do I even say to them when I sit down at their table? “How’s that AP Bio test going?” That’s so awkward, it makes my chest hurt just thinking about it.
I saw that guy Javi, the one I made out with at that bonfire back in June, when I was at the school picking up my schedule. He was leaning against a locker talking to someone, and I just turned right around and hid in the girls’ bathroom for five minutes until he left. I don’t even know why I did that. We don’t go out or anything, we just text sometimes about homework, but the thought of saying hi to him in the hallway made my stomach twist. That’s how out of practice I am with all these stupid little unwritten social rules everyone else seems to remember by heart.
All over the school walls there are these big neon posters that say “SENIOR 2024: MAKE IT COUNT!” and every time I see one I want to roll my eyes so hard they get stuck. What does that even mean? That I have to go to every football game and get drunk at every party and take a million candid photos for Instagram or it’s a waste? What if I don’t want that? What if counting to me is getting a good portfolio together so I can get into the art program I want, instead of wasting four hours a week at pep rallies I don’t care about?
I will say, there’s this tiny, annoying part of me that wonders if I’m missing something. The annual senior art show is in May, and all the in-person kids get to put up to three pieces in the main gallery downtown. If I stay remote, I can only put one piece in the online show. I’ve been working on this big painting of my grandma’s backyard, the one with the old oak tree and the birdbath that’s been there since my mom was a kid, for three months. I want people to stand in front of it and see all the little brush strokes, not just look at a blurry photo on a screen. And sometimes I see people posting about going to get ice cream after school, and I feel a little twist of something, like jealousy maybe? But then I remember the 20 minute lunch line and the awkward walk across the cafeteria when all the good tables are full and you have to ask a group of strangers if you can sit down, and that twist goes away pretty fast.
The form is due tomorrow at 5pm. I still haven’t checked a box. My mom keeps popping her head in my room asking if I’ve decided yet, and I keep saying yeah, almost. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and feel brave, and check the in-person box. Maybe I’ll stay home, and stick with Mochi and my iced coffee and my afternoons free to paint. I don’t know. No one seems to get that it’s okay to not know. Everyone wants you to have the big, exciting senior year they saw in the movies, but this is my year, right? It’s just… messy right now. I’m still staring at the screen. The cursor is blinking between the two boxes. I don’t have an answer yet. And that’s okay, I guess. For now, anyway. (Word count: 1128)
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