For the high school and college classes of 2020 — and their families — the coronavirus outbreak has left a large, empty space where signature coming-of-age moments should be.
Alec Garcia and 20 other freshmen stepped onto the baseball field at Grover Cleveland Charter High School in Reseda for the first time in June 2016. The grass was crunchy and yellow; the dirt, dangerous and unforgiving, chopped into uneven shards from the stampede of weekend soccer games.
“I don’t want to say that I was riding on baseball for college,” Alec said from his Encino home, “but I put a lot of effort into [it], hoping that I could get a scholarship.”After L.A. Unified schools shut down, Alec improvised to stay in shape. “I was trying to be optimistic and have hope that we would get back into things — even if we came back in mid- to late May,” he said, “because my whole life has been school and baseball, you know? And not having either of them….” His voice trails off.
Skye’s senior-year schedule started at 7 a.m. and included Advanced Placement classes, college courses, violin lessons and volunteer work through her local Boys and Girls Club. She earned the second-highest GPA in her class and in the fall will attend Pomona College on a full ride. In her graduation speech, she planned to thank her grandmother, who was “going to record it and listen to it every morning.
Guadalupe Gomez is the mother of Culver City High School senior Diana Martinez, who turned a lifelong Lego fixation into an interest in engineering. Diana was scheduled to attend a robotics competition in Michigan at the end of April. It was canceled, as was the upcoming event she was most excited about — her graduation ceremony
For high school seniors with college in their sights, the final events before graduation are supposed to be a reward for a For Leticia Mejia, an immigrant from Honduras, her son’s graduation would have looked different but been no less important. Now the graduation has been postponed until at least late 2020. Mejia canceled the dress order. She still hopes to see Rojas graduate, though, and to enjoy a celebratory dinner — even if it’s only at home.Christine Tran, a first-generation college student at UCLA, was looking forward to a big graduation ceremony that would signal to her Vietnamese parents what she had achieved and let them know their sacrifices have mattered.
Recently, Tran was offered a Fulbright fellowship to teach in Vietnam — a dream job — but now she’s waiting to hear from a U.S.-based fellowship that would keep her closer to home. He’d carefully mapped out his undergraduate plans so he could spend his last quarter in Washington. He had an internship lined up with Rep. Mark Takano and hoped to build connections that he could parlay into a job in public policy after graduating. And Al-Alami, the son of Palestinian immigrants, was looking forward to fasting for Ramadan with a new community of Muslims.
As Alec posed against a wall in his living room, he considered his shoulder-length hair, which he believed was inexorably linked to his team’s success.
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