To start off, I’d like to thank all of my classmates, friends, teachers, parents, and family who have helped create such a wonderful high school experience for the Class of 2020. I didn’t know what I was getting into four years ago, but now that it’s coming to an end, I see it all turned out just fine.

We first started our journey into high school in the fall of 2016. I’m sure we all remember those first days, struggling to find classes, seeing what seemed like a million new faces, and not knowing which lunch waves we were in. So much has changed since these days, except maybe understanding lunch waves, and we are finally graduating. I remember hearing past seniors’ speeches about how time flies over these four years, and I’d think: that can’t be, the second semester of junior year seemed to drag on forever. But now, when I look back at the last four years of my own life, I find myself asking: Where did the time go?

Half of this time we were underclassmen. I know you might not want to remember that, but I recall just trying to do well in my classes and have some fun along the way, not really knowing where the rest of my life was headed. We were told to be productive in study hall, although doing nothing always seemed more enticing, at least to me.

A common experience for many of us during these first two years was getting excited for the next sports season, the next state tournament game, or shoreline finals match. Coming together to support our school shows the passion in our class. I think as freshmen we would all look forward to junior and senior year when we could be team captains, MVPs, or maybe even recruits to a college for our favorite sport.

Approaching junior year, we started to take harder classes, and classes that were more specific regarding a career path. Again, we are supposed to be setting ourselves up for success in the future. Whether it was shop classes, art classes, music classes, or something else, being able to have more flexibility in our schedules for the things we loved most seemed like the best thing ever.

High school seemed to only get better every year. I always thought that the first three years of year school just built up to a great senior year but look at our lives now. We can’t go anywhere, do anything, or even see any of our friends. The supposed peak of our high school careers, our senior spring, is nothing like we imagined. We may have our post-high school plans, but we don’t know what happens after that. This thought nagged me ever since out last normal day of school, until I finally came to a conclusion.

You can spend your whole life worried about what happens next, or you can enjoy what you have. The most important lesson I’ve learned, and what I think we’ve all learned, is to say yes. Throughout your time in high school, you may have been asked: Do you want to join our club? Will you play on our sports team? Are you going to see the state finals? Do you want to retake that test you failed? Are you applying there for college? Do you want to go on this field trip?

I feel that our class is unique because the answer to all these questions has always been yes. Even though in this moment, it might feel like we are missing out on our high school experience, I promise you, our high school experience has not been lacking in any way. We can still think back to better days, but we have to live in the moment and enjoy it, because it disappears quickly. We won’t get any substitute for all that we’ve missed our senior year, but that’s OK. Instead of torturing myself wondering when life will go back to normal after this whole COVID-19 situation is over, I realized that it won’t. This is our high school experience, and it’s unlike anything else that has come before us. When I look back and wonder where the time went, I see now it went into fulfilling a high school experience unlike any other.

(Theodore Wayland is the Honor Essayist at Lyme-Old Lyme High School.)