Letters to the Class of 2020

Dear Class of 2020, Where are we now? What are we doing? Who have we become? This isn’t how we planned it all, is it? What should have been our senior prank, senior ditch day, senior barbecue, senior prom, and graduation has turned into spending countless hours sitting in our rooms doing homework until our hands can’t move and crying every time we call our friends because we miss them more than we thought possible.

There’s no handbook for the way this year is ending. While the classes before us and the classes to come have a handy dandy instruction book on how to finish senior year, we are left to figure everything out for ourselves. Somehow, we are expected to start the next chapter of life without ever having finished this one. It’s like reading three-quarters of a novel and skipping to the last page. Uncertainty rises higher and higher, almost as fast as the number of COVID-19 patients.

I don’t feel ready to move on. I know the world is scary and different and will never be the world we once knew. There will always be the lingering fear that the woman coughing in the grocery store aisle next to you has the virus. There will, forevermore, be the emptiness left from the lack of closure this tumultuous time has taken from us. We are changed. We are a modified people. The world is new.

How do we navigate the streets of a town that has been ravished by fear? How do we accept a reality that was never even in the cards? I surely don’t know. I suppose the best, and, quite frankly, the only thing we can do now is wait. Feel. Grow. Cry. Laugh. And come together. For, we are all we have anymore. We don’t have a teacher to come running to when our friends left us alone at the lunch table. We don’t have a counselor's office to cry in when the day is just too much to bear. We have our family. We have Snapchat. We have Instagram. And the few old fashioned of us have Facebook.

Though I wish I could write some uplifting ending about how this all is going to turn out right and it will all have been worth it, I don’t think it will. We have been robbed of one of the most important times in our developing lives and we will forever have a different outlook on life than the rest. Though, yes, life will turn out just fine for most of us, this could have been the one thing some kids had been waiting for. To some, senior prom could have been the thing they were clinging onto so they didn’t give up entirely. Though, yes, we will all move on, there will never be another Class of 2020 in any high school hall.

Dear Class of 2020,

We were built tough. Everyone always says that our generation is soft, but rather we are strong like the back of a turtle shell. #Savetheturtles, right? There are no two ways about the fact that this is a difficult time for everyone, but there is still hope.

I feel the class of 2020 should see this as an opportunity rather than a discouraging journey. We have basically 5 months for summer for crying out loud! There are an array of things we can still do now that we have all of this free time to do the things we want, whether it be to build our castle in life, or get a headstart to the amazing things we have to look forward to. All of you guys should stay positive and start working towards the things you were going to do after high school anyways. Make goals, accomplish them, and be the best person you can be.

Our generation is tough, and we can make it through anything. As long as we, as a class, stay positive there is a lot more opportunity than doubt through all of this. There is only one thing that it requires, and that is a shift in perspective. You have to look at the brightside. Accomplish what you have always dreamed of, and if you can't, start making a list of what you can accomplish after this whole thing is over.

My advice is to stay positive, and to know that everything happens for a reason, stay strong #classof2020strong.

Sincerely,

Austin Brown

Dear Class of 2020,

We were born right around 9/11. We were the first students to grow up in a world where school shootings happen. We grew up through the Iraq war, Afghanistan, The collapse of 2008 and Terrorist attacks galore. Now as we are about to graduate we are faced with a global pandemic. The economy is the lowest its been in 100 years, and we are locked indoors during one of the best times of our lives. You and I both know that this can’t last forever, and we know we will survive. Don’t lose hope, life moves on.

Coronavirus is just another obstacle for us to overcome. In our lifetime the class of 2020 and Gen Z have changed the world. We have changed and formed the social platforms that connect the world. We share our voices as much as we can. We are the dreamers. The class of 2020 has dreams. Don’t lose sight of yours. Everything will get better, we are fortunate if we are healthy, and we have the rest of our lives ahead of us. Power through. It is your only choice. We’ve changed the world many times just from speaking out on the platforms given to us. We can’t interact with the world, but we can still make an impact.

The world sucks sometimes, but no one person can save it. It has to be all of us working together. Take to social media and be the change we are meant to be. Don’t waste the power we have. We may be just teenagers, but we are the next adults, and in my opinion, they haven’t done so well so far. Let’s fix it.

Sincerely,

Ben Braunstein

Dear Class of 2020,

It all started when we walked in as scared little freshmen on our first day of high school. We were known as the class of 2020, Freshmen Fight Club, and the Troubling Class. Little did we know we would make such a difference and go through so much. As we started to grow through high school, we made friends and we lost friends, we messed up, and we learned from our mistakes.

We are now seniors, class of 2020. We are now the top guns. We are the example for Mountain Range and the incoming freshmen. We started out senior year with a sunrise. We all got up at the crack of dawn to sit in our trunks with our best friends and watch the beautiful sunrise. Then came all our football games. We may have lost quite a bit, but we still had the most school spirit I have ever seen. We didn’t care about winning, we cared about having fun and supporting each other.

Then came our last winter break. When we came back, we never thought we would be out of school in the next 3 months instead of 4. We never thought our senior year would be cut so short. That we wouldn’t be able to spend the rest of our senior year with our best friends and favorite teachers.

This time was supposed to be our greatest, not the worst. This time was supposed to be spent with our friends that would be leaving soon to different places. This time was supposed to be when all the spring sports take their turn on the field. It was their turn to play and have the school come support them. It was supposed to be the time that the theater kids would finally put on the musical they have worked so hard for. We were supposed to have our senior barbecue and have our friends sign our senior yearbooks. It was our year to graduate. It was our time to let loose before we head into adulthood.

We never thought the one thing we worked the hardest for would be taken away. We’ve been talking about graduation since we became seniors. We watched as all the classes before us had their senior prom and graduation, but when it came our turn we got it all taken away from us in a blink of an eye.

This was our time, the Class of 2020’s time. All we can do now is hope for the best and hope that our special days will come and we can finally walk on that stage and get our diplomas.

Sometimes life gives you lemons and all you have left to do is make lemonade. Our senior year was going to be our best year before we had to walk down the path of life. I know right now sucks, I truly get it, but we need to look on the bright side. We need to be brave for others. We need to show the world that nothing, not even the Coronavirus, can break the Class of 2020.

Sincerely,

Gracelyn Domenico

Dear Class of 2020,

I get your pain and struggle. Even though senior year came to an end really quickly and in a really weird way, there is still a good side to it. You get to start your life early, you get a longer summer break if you're going to college. If you didn't like going to school, well there is no more of that. And best of all, hopefully your school work has gone down a little bit.

But I understand the bad side. Especially if you're like me and friends are your everything. Those people made your days and even your life better and better every day. Now they are gone. It's heartbreaking. But if those friends care about you as much as you care about them, when this pandemic is over, you'll still be the closest friends. They will still talk to you every day and come over for BBQ at your house or even just have a slumber party like you guys used to do before.

Don't let this Covid-19 stuff take away your life and make you sad. It's just a trip to the next stage of life that none of us are ready for, but that's okay too. We will all learn just like the class of 2018 and 2019 did. Although we are struggling, let’s come together and make the class of 2020 the best class to ever graduate. I mean, without the pandemic, that still would have happened, but now we got mad street cred! So, let’s do it in the class of 2020 style. Crazy and outrageous. I get it, we don't get prom, or senior ditch day, or even our class prank, but we get the craziest graduation story in the history of graduations. Just imagine graduation as a 500 student Zoom call? Seriously, no other class could have done this kind of senior prank- we got every school in the United States shut down for the rest of the year! Round of applause and a big pat on the back to us, am I right?

We will finish this year, even if it's on a computer. We will go down in history and we will survive despite this bad ending. To the times that we had, are having, and will have- cheers to the Class of 2020.

Lots of love,

Tanner Meuret

Dear Class of 2020,

In the 17 or 18 years that we have all been alive, we have never experienced anything quite like this. For years, everything has been laid out for us, but this crisis will not take that away from us. We are still, and will always be, the Senior Class of 2020.

We have worked for so many years to retain the knowledge that our teachers have worked to teach us. Right now we are angry and sad over every single thing that we have lost. I think one of the most important things that we can do is to support ourselves and each other and just be as positive as we can be. As much of a cheesy thing that is, it is something that will make this horrible situation a tiny bit better. We have missed moments that we have looked forward to for years, but we can power through this and we can make new memories. This is a moment that will be remembered as an incredibly devastating historical occasion. We are living through it, it is important to remember it.

As of right now, there are not a lot of things that we can do to make this situation any less heartbreaking for us. People may look at how we are reacting to this and say, “there are people in the world feeling worse and more hurt than you guys”, when in reality, this is the most lost we have ever felt. Despite what others are experiencing, we have not felt loss quite like this before. It would not be fair for anyone to compare their hurt to any other person experiencing this situation because the pain that they are feeling might be the most pain that they have ever felt. No matter the comparison to your own hurt. Every single person has lost something because of this. Just because someone is carrying thousands of pounds, doesn’t mean the weight someone else is carrying isn’t just as heavy to them. We are not alone in this. We have each other and we will make it through this. We are still the class of 2020, and we will get those diplomas that we have worked for so long to receive.

In the end yes, we are all lost and confused. We are angry and hurt. But, most importantly we are strong, and we are resilient.

Sincerely,

Kylee Wallace

Dear Class of 2020,

Remember when we started the decade thinking this was gonna be fun? Me too. I wish that wasn’t just a distant memory. I don’t know how you guys are feeling, but I’m tired of feeling. Not in like an emo, Hot Topic, way. I’ve felt so many emotions that it’s almost like I’m too exhausted to actually feel things now. The past month has been one unending vibe check from God. How many vibes can we check? They've been checked. SEVERAL times at this point.

I feel like the most frustrating part of this experience is that I understand. I understand why everything we’ve looked forward to for the past four years has been taken away. It was always a possibility when they canceled that first week. I never thought it would all be taken away so soon. I remember the night they first announced the two week break I was at Village Inn after opening the musical and I was excited for break. I saw it as a vacation, but what it turned into was the exact opposite.

I’ve tried taking advantage of all the time I have and am trying new things. I recommend baking because if you stress eat you can burn calories standing around and making the stress snacks. I’ve made banana bread, a cake, cupcakes, bread and even candied orange peels. It’s been a time of experimentation.

Try to create something. When you feel destructive, be constructive. Paint, draw, rearrange your room, take photos, build a lego, bake, build a house by a lake in Minecraft. And, if you're privileged enough to have Animal Crossing: New Horizons, CHERISH IT. Not all of us can be lucky like you. Be nice to yourself in these endeavors. Not every piece of art has to be award winning. It’s okay to make things just to have fun.

We’re all in this together, so that means we have people to talk to. We have the technology to keep in touch. Tell your friends how much they mean to you. I’ve been doing that a lot. Call family members you haven’t talked to in a while. We’re all struggling, but that doesn’t mean we’re alone.

Here’s to the strongest graduating class,

Sadie Gonzales

Dear Class of 2020,

As we are creeping up on our final days of high school, I think it’s safe to say that we are all a little disappointed. We didn’t get prom. We didn’t get to say goodbye and we might not even get to walk across that stage with our families cheering our names. But, we will still always be the Class of 2020.

I remember walking into Mountain Range my sophomore year after I had just transferred. I had no clue what to do. It was so big and I didn’t know anyone. I can now look back at my decision to attend MRHS and say that it was one of the best decisions I have made. I met my closest friends, had some of the best teachers, and made some of the most memorable memories. It is bittersweet for all of that to be overlooked because we are facing a huge pandemic.

I've always said “everything happens for a reason” and although this might suck now, it truly will make us stronger. And for many of us, that college graduation will be even a million times more special.

After watching Superintendent Gdowski’s speech a few days ago, the fact that we went through 12 years of school for this to happen is heartbreaking. I find myself struggling a little more each day as the planned graduation date gets closer. As of right now all we can really do is hope. Don’t just hope to walk across that stage, hope to have the best summer of your life. Spend this summer with no regrets and do the little things you wouldn’t normally do. It’s time to jump out of your comfort zone and make this the most memorable summer of your life.

I will hold the people at Mountain Range really close to my heart and I sincerely hope that you all find what you are looking for in your future. And I also hope we all get the closure that we need. We need to stand by each other in this hard time and be the strongest class that MRHS has ever had.

Xoxo,

Sarah Synave

Dear Class of 2020,

I hate that this is happening to us. I never would have seen our senior year ending this way. I know that our prom getting cancelled along with the uncertainty about graduation was heartbreaking, because we have no control over it.

I was so ready to see all of the faces I started high school with in the MRHS auditorium, stand with me in Boulder getting ready to face things bigger than high school. All of us together, preparing to face our futures. I don’t think I will ever get over the fact that I’m not going to be able to do that on May 13th. I won’t be able to stand with my cap and gown next to all 400 of you and there aren’t words to describe how devastating that feels.

However, I know we’ll all get to come together soon even if it’s not on May 13th. We have all come together to support each other in such a unique way. We’ve continued our prom traditions despite the fact that there was no actual dance. We’ve shared our individual stories and we’re continuing to honor each other’s accomplishments, even if we’re not doing so all together at graduation.

I’ve never been more proud of my MRHS senior class. We’ve been dealt an unimaginable hand and we still managed to come together, even though we have to stay apart. I know we’ll get through this because we’re the class of 2020, we already made it this far and we’ll continue to change the world.

Love,

Alessandra Leon

Dear Class of 2020.

Welcome to adulthood. I can’t believe I got to grow into the women I am today with you guys. We’ve made the best memories that will forever have a special place in my heart. I remember our freshman year, man were we some stupid kids. We quickly learned how the next four years would go. We got to know each other and made some of the strongest connections we would ever make.

In 2020 we went to war, a silent war. Coronavirus decided to flip our world around. He stole all of our hard work, or just minimal work for some of us. Never in a million years would I think I would’ve had my last day of high school and not know it. March 16th we were told that we would miss two weeks of school so Coronavirus would die down, we were all wrong. We were then told that we would return April 16th and continue our classes, we were yet again wrong. We then found out that school was closed for the rest of the year. I heard the news and it shattered me.

I am angry. I am angry for my fellow classmates who worked harder than me, I am angry for my friends who no longer get their final memories with the class of 2020, I am angry for my teachers who no longer get to teach the class of 2020. How could this happen to us, we are almost done? My anger towards COVID-19 is unspeakable. I have cried countless times out of anger, my heart honestly hurts. I don’t want to learn this way, I don’t want to communicate this way. I want MY year back. This was our year and it is now gone, what a roller coaster.

I am sad. I am sad for myself because I struggled so much more than I should have. I hit my lowest point in my life and had amazing people help lift me up to be the woman I am today. I am sad for my classmates who struggled and made it as far as they did. I am sad for the younger classes because they are getting their high school experience away from them. I am sad for my friends who cry everyday because of how this is impacting them and their families. I am sad for my teachers who are losing the in person experience of teaching a class. I am sad for our principal, who was going to retire with our class. 18 years gone in a day. I am sad for children who don’t understand what is happening in the world today and that they have to live in fear. I am sad for the elders who are no longer to leave their houses, or see their friends, or go thrift shopping on Tuesdays for senior discounts.

Our nation has looked fear in its eyes and seen ugly things. Our safety should always be our first priority, and if I have learned anything about the Class of 2020, it’s that we are some of the most caring people around. I care about every single one of the seniors, I care about their safety, health, and happiness. As we start a new chapter of our lives we should be thinking about how we can positively impact one another. Whether it’s a FaceTime call, a text, or just a picture of us smiling to let them know that we are okay.

The Class of 2020 will go down in history as the class who changed everything. We will be in history books, we will be talked about for years to come, we will be the reason to try harder. Imagine yourself in 20 years telling your children that everything will, in fact, be okay? Imagine being old and knowing you survived a terrifying pandemic? We are the change for this world, but the only way that will stay true is if we stay positive. Keep pushing, never give up, even if it’s hurting you or it’s too hard.

Class of 2020, you are loved, you are amazing, and you are strong. Your fellow classmate,

Emma Schneiderwent

Dear Class of 2020,

I know that this isn’t how we planned for our senior year to go, but we aren’t the only ones. We should not forget about the class of 2020 who are graduating from elementary school, middle school and college. This is just as big of a deal as it is for them as it is for us.

I just want to let you guys know that it is okay to feel sad. I know that there are people out there that are saying that we shouldn’t feel the way we do. It's just that they don’t understand. They say they do, but they don't. They got to go to their senior prom and graduation as scheduled. I just can't stress this enough, your feelings are valid. Even if people say they aren’t. I understand. The class of 2020 understands. We just have to be here for each other. We will get through this. We will get through this together, just six feet apart. If you are having a difficult time right now here is a quote to help us get through it. “It is only in our darkest hours that we may discover the true strength of the brilliant light within ourselves that can never, ever, be dimmed.” – Doe Zantamata.

Sincerely, Kristi Penix

Dear Class of 2020,

Here we are...

We made it!

Just, not the way we thought we would...

In the time we thought we would be taking our final bows, our last wins, our concluding tests, we have taken our finishing steps into the place where we grew up, the place we found ourselves, the place we were proud to call home.

In a world of lasts, ours have been terminal. We have been pushed over the finish line without warning, shoved into a world of unknown. While other senior classes have been presented with many goodbyes, ours were abrupt, unexpected, and more heartbreaking than we could imagine. Now, we are forced to spend the remaining weeks of our high school career online. We have grown up being told to turn away from technology, to shy away from our phones, our laptops, our televisions, and enjoy the memories, and now have no choice but to rely on technology to grasp onto any sort of senior year reminiscences that may be left in the fragments of our broken promises.

We are sifting through lost hope and broken expectations, desperate to find any remnants of good to finish out the year with. I am sorry for each and every one of us who is going through such unique loss that it’s hard to even find comfort in one another. At this time, it is easy to lose sight of any hope. After all, the things we have been promised for years, have been pulled out from underneath us, and we’ve been left voiceless, powerless, or at least that’s what it feels like. This is more than just a broken pinky promise, this feels like a betrayal.

When this first began, I struggled to feel that it was okay to be sad. I struggled to allow myself to grieve. “People have it much worse, it would be selfish of me to be devastated over something I took for granted for so long” I would think to myself, choking back tears and piecing together the fragments of sadness I thought were so unprecedented. But, my dear class of 2020, nothing is farther from the truth. All loss is loss. THIS loss is monumental and something unique to only us. We are grieving through a tragedy that we never even considered a possibility. We are all in shock. We are all in pain. And that is okay. It is okay to grieve, it is okay to be sad, it is okay to cope however is best for you. No matter what anyone says. Feel those feelings. Move at your own pace. Be not okay for as long as you need.

Sincerely, Shaylen Mann

Dear Class Of 2020,

We’re all feeling so many emotions at once: sad, frustrated, annoyed, irritated, hopeless. But we’re all going through this together. I’ve never felt this kind of support ever, our families, friends and teachers have all been pushing us to succeed. We all walked into our school doors for one last time and we didn’t even know it. I’ve always been the type of person that has disliked school, but now not having it has really made me miss it. We were all starting to count down the days to prom, graduation etc. Even though our high school lives didn’t end the way we wanted it to, we sure had one heck of a ride.

From the first day of freshman year to our last day as seniors, we’ve all grown so much as people and students. We have all become one big family throughout our 4 years in high school. We should all feel confident about our futures because we’re all super bright and talented kids with potential that the whole world can see. We are currently living in history, the things we’re going through are going to be talked about for years in other high schools’ history classes.

So why not make sure we have a great ending to this pandemic? Why not make sure that the history class 20 years from now doesn’t walk away with the knowledge of our hard work and success? Why not make sure that we go down in history as the people who overcame this tragedy and became the most successful people in our generation? Why not?

Sincerely,

Brayan Parra<3