Sayonara, Zoom Seniors

Photo Source: Dylan Ryu

When I ask my roommates, fellow Santa Clara seniors, about our freshman year, most deny that they were the last class to be impacted by online school. We were online much of sophomore year, and everyone had to quarantine in high school anyhow. 

But when people divulge some of the stuff that went on, it feels like a watered-down absurdist tragicomic–a more measly variant of the stuff of Catch-22s and Slaughterhouse Fives.

Memories of Zoom school float up intermittently–long-lost chunks of beef in a bubbling brain stew. I recall watching a senior crack open a beer onscreen for his last day of class, condemned to complete college online. 

Some tried to make friends, others communicated awkwardly through Zoom DMs. Echos tell tall tales of people meeting romantic partners via Zoom, only to have those relationships disintegrate upon reconvening at campus. 

Current seniors aren’t apt to talk about the Online Ages–but upon prompting will admit that while in some ways it was nice, generally, as senior Cassidy Griffith eloquently explains, “it was ass.”

Students disclose getting high all day, sleeping through classes, letting their brains curdle. 

For many–like seniors Maria Perez and Griffith–COVID-19 afforded an opportunity to slack off. 

Griffith elaborates that she and her friends would, “just go do fuckshit every day.”

She–like everyone–had a unique experience. She transferred to Santa Clara after a year of online school at the University of Washington. 

Griffith reflects she felt less remorseful of online classes when living close to campus sophomore year. Still, she admits there was something bittersweet about her first year from home.

“It was just different in U-Dub online because I was at home,” Griffith said. “I didn’t know what I was missing. I got to hang out with my friends all day, wake up for my class, sleep through it, plan my day with total freedom–it felt like I just got to keep being a kid.” 

But a crystallized continuation of high school wasn’t all advantageous. Cass admits being allowed to smoke pot all day did impact her–all she’d accomplish was smoking pot.

Perez–who had to return from traveling Europe after her gap year program–concurs that there was lots of smoking, but this often kept her from emotional breakdown. 

This was accompanied by a host of bad habits—a lackadaisical attitude towards school (which she feels she still hasn’t recovered from), sleeping through responsibilities, comfortability being home all day. Conversely, there was something sweet about spending time with family. 

Maria and I both spent that year on the East Coast, meaning our 8 a.m.s were at 11 a.m. I’d wake up in time to attend class from my bed while my oversized cow-colored cat curled around me. By spring quarter, I habitually attended class while sunbathing on my back porch, my Zoomscape a canopy of trees. 

I completed an absurd amount of my midterms in Cafe Nero and drank exorbitant amounts of coffee. I finished all finals sitting criss-cross applesauce on my front porch, sipping chamomile tea as my beloved decrepit three-legged dog bounced around our front yard.

It certainly wasn’t all bad, but a lot of it was. 

Senior Katie England spent a year in Europe and felt an enhanced passion for academics with few outside responsibilities. She admitted the strangeness of having all her friends go off and have a normal college experience–even a twinge of envy. 

England watched her friends party amid a pandemic on private stories with discontent. But she understood everyone craved the evasive normal college experience–she’d be doing the same thing in their place. She just didn’t have the opportunity. 

Most admit to taking up hectic hobbies during the pandemic. 

Maria cooked, Cassidy smoked pot and Katie took up the ukulele and FaceTiming friends. 

“My friends at college would FaceTime me and I’d get drunk in my room with them,” England admitted. “Then they’d go out and I’d go to bed.” 

She further divulges dredges of going in the shower fully clothed and eating conditioner on a dare, cutting open a giant Costco Teddy Bear to crawl into for TikTok dances and having a social media-instilled eating disorder. 

While England’s almost-absurdism seems comically daunting, getting drunk with your mom and dad on a random Tuesday night was not particularly out of the ordinary. 

Reflecting comes with a sense of surrealism. Now-best friends were once just rectangles before randomly running each other on campus. Some students note the formation of sturdy school friendships belated by the year online. 

Committing to remorse over a grotesquely misconstrued year remains an option for SCU seniors. COVID-19 still doesn’t sit right with some students–the mere memory feels like some sort of psychedelic mirage. Many admit an infantile bitterness over a year robbed from them but find outweighing silver linings of spending a year with themselves.