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Holy Spirit grads grateful for chance to end the school year together

By Chris Lewis | May 27, 2021

Student council members at Holy Spirit High School in CBS are keeping their own spirits high.

Graduation is something most high school students spend months preparing for. Although last year’s graduating class had to put all that on the back burner due to the COVID-19 pandemic, members of the 2021 graduating class say they are making the best of what they have.

Abby Mitchell and Mikaila Mayo are members of the student council at Holy Spirit. Both students say the pandemic made for a messy year, but the attitudes of their fellow classmates have not dampened as they get closer to the big day.

Students at Holy Spirit spent about half of their year physically back in the classroom, right up until February when they had to go back to learning strictly online for a couple of months.

Both Mitchell and Mayo said one of the biggest highlights of their final year of school was being able to get back to a normal class routine.

Mitchell, president of the student council, said she and her classmates were happy to return to a school setting.

“A lot of people think we would rather be online,” she said. “But we were so frustrated with being online – especially these last couple of months – because we were so used to being there in person, especially when we started the school year that way. It was honestly really nice to see how excited everyone was to be back in school … It’s not the circumstances that everyone would like, but the morale and the excitement was still there.”

Mayo said she was proud of her classmates for how cooperative everyone was throughout the circumstances.

She described being nervous about going back to school when social distancing measures were raised once more, but felt that nervousness quickly dispell once she got her feet back onto the hallways.

“It seemed like everyone wanted to be there, and wanted to finish the year in school,” she said. “We’ve been listening to everyone’s feedback for our Spirit Weeks and stuff. I feel like everyone has been really understanding with how things have to be this year. Whether that be grad itself, or school in general. I have to give everyone props, they’ve all been amazing.”

Mitchell said going into this school year, the students had to alter their expectations right from the get-go.

The difference between this year’s class and the Class of 2020 was the fact they had more time to settle their expectations, and were not thrown to the wolves of COVID-19 halfway through the year.

She said knowing their graduation could change at any given moment, she and her classmates still wanted the year to be as good as it could be.

“We still wanted the Spirit Weeks, and still wanted all the things that got people involved. We just had to re-plan how we go about doing those things,” she said. “We’ve been able to keep in touch with each other – even now when we’re half-and-half back in the classrooms – through virtual things like Google Classrooms, where I can post things and people can comment and just stay involved even though we’re not seeing each other as much.”

Although this year’s prom will look quite different with no parents present, Mayo and Mitchell both said they are simply grateful to be having a prom at all.

“You know, there are things we can’t do that people did in years before us, but the way we’re trying to look at it is that we’re also able to do things that no one else has done before. So, we’re all pretty excited, honestly,” Mayo said.

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