On June 18, I will be graduating from Brattleboro Union High School, and, as most of my classmates will understand, the spring of senior year mandates internal reflection.
As is annual tradition, teachers will require us to provide several 400-word reflections on our academic experience. These reflections will, ostensibly, provide closure to 10 months of mental and emotional onslaught, brought not only by the standard turbulence of high school, but multiplied by the isolation and existential horror of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Certainly, there is cathartic value in writing these required reflections. Perhaps, even, one of these assignments would have been an appropriate forum to present what follows.
However, I believe my pitch should be accessible to as many eyes as possible, and so I present it here.