HealthDay Reports: Proms Gone, Graduations Online — Pandemic Cancels Kids' Rites of Passage
High school and college graduates across the country were hit with canceled proms, online graduations, missed opportunities and no sense of closure as the pandemic made many of their schools shut down during their final months of school.
Proms Gone, Graduations Online: Pandemic Cancels Kids' Rites of Passage
MONDAY, May 18, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- COVID-19 is stealing all the pomp and circumstance from end-of-year celebrations for this year's high school and college graduates.
Take Lily McConnell, 17, a senior at Lakeland High School in Shrub Oak, N.Y. She was looking forward to a lot of things -- big and small -- that were supposed to happen during her final months in high school.
"There are the obvious things that have been canceled, like graduation and prom," McConnell said, also noting that she had been cast as one of the leads in her school play. That has also been canceled.
"Lakeland has a senior picnic, and a day where we go to our elementary schools and say goodbye. Honestly, these things are what I'm most upset about -- classroom celebrations, getting my yearbook signed, the small things," she said.
McConnell pointed out that teenagers know they could have it way worse. "We know that people have lost their jobs, people are sick and dying, but that doesn't mean that we can't be upset about losing our senior year. We are allowed to be upset," she said.