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Yellow Springs High School  CLASS OF 2 0 2 0  A Special Section of the YEllow Springs News  |  May 28, 2020    9 Sam & Eddie’s Open Books James A. Tetz, D.M.D. Tom’s Market Benzer Pharmacy Chanel Phillips Parents/guardians: Carole Phillips I moved to Yellow Springs my junior year of high school. I’m originally from Las Vegas, Nev. I didn’t really know what to expect coming from a school with 2,000-plus students to a school with 400, maybe fewer, students. The first year was pretty hard, but I met lots of amazing, friendly people. I did three sports, joined lots of clubs and made many real friends. Then comes my senior year. Of course you are excited to start your senior year. It’s what you’ve been waiting for and working so hard for to get to that point. I did volleyball for the first time, basketball and cheer and was going to join track. I got cheer captain, got on homecoming court and my twin brother got homecoming king. Lots of amazing things this senior year. There were also some downfalls, though. For one, an amazing bus driver who had such a big positive impact on students at Yellow Springs passed away. A couple weeks later, things started to get a little better. Last games for basketball and cheer. Starting track practices. It was going great. Until this virus came and destroyed the year. COVID-19 has affected us seniors the last couple months of high school so much. We have worked so hard for 12-plus years to walk across the stage and get our diploma. Doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. Which was hard, at least for me, to process in the begin- ning. To have our last ever prom taken away from us. Going out with friends to buy prom dresses or even get asked to go to the prom taken away from us. The most important months of our senior year were taken away. It’s sad to think about because we have worked so hard to get to this point in our lives. Sad to think that we won’t be able to tell our kids how our last prom was, or how it felt to walk across the stage and get handed our diploma. It’s hard. This pandemic has affected my rela- tionship with friends and family in many ways. I’ve reconnected with lots of family members back in Nevada which makes me really happy. We get on FaceTime almost everyday. It has brought me closer to my mom and siblings. I’m obviously home more since there is no school or sports, but its been hard with my friends. I have friends that I’m really close to so it’s hard not to see them every day like I used to. We still all get on FaceTime every now and then, but I just want to be with them, hang out and go on random car rides. I just miss having great times with my friends, but if this is over by summer, then this summer is about to be the best summer ever. Just wait. If we graduate, I plan to attend Sin- clair Community College to become a paramedic. It has always been my dream to help people. Hopefully this doesn’t affect my plans after graduation, but at the pace it’s going, I’m wondering if I’m even going to college in the fall. Other than these last few months, my high school experience has been amaz- ing. Going from a big high school to a small high school was a huge change, but a great change. I’ve met such real and amazing people who have had a big impact on my life. In 10 years, I see myself with a loving family and a great job as a paramedic. A nice house in Ohio, Las Vegas, Los Angeles or Canada. I also see myself with two big dogs, a monkey and a cat. Romel Phillips Parents/guardians: Carole Phillips I moved to Yellow Springs the summer before my junior year of high school, and it was a real change in my life, because Yellow Springs is a totally different culture and experience from Las Vegas. When I first moved here with my mom and sister, I somewhat forced myself to not like it here because I didn’t want to be here. As time moved on, I met amaz- ing friends, started playing sports again and accepted that this is where I’m going to finish high school. My senior year started off amazingly. I had a 3.8 GPA in the first quarter of school, won homecoming king while my twin sister was on homecoming court, got voted captain of the basketball team with one of my closest friends and was about to start baseball season. As 2020 rolled around, everything seemed to go downhill. I lost one of my biggest child- hood heroes, Kobe Bryant; suffered the loss of one of the kindest people I’ve ever met, Mr. Darryl; and now we have COVID-19 that has halted the rest of my senior year. The start of your senior year is some- thing that every high school student looks forward to the most, besides graduating, of course. We are at the top of the school, the final year until we’re out of here. We’ve got our last home- coming, last prom, last time playing the sport you love with friends and countless memories to be created with the people you relate to the most, but all of that has come to an early end due to the corona- virus. Every student in the class of 2020 has had to transition to adult life a little earlier than expected. My senior year has changed a lot due to this pandemic. I still work at Friends Care, but my personal life has changed a lot. I stay at home all day because I have to and all I really do now is online homework, play video games and sleep. I can’t hang out with friends anymore, and it really sucks, but I still talk to them through FaceTime and make sure they’re still doing good through this confusing time in our history. I’m not fully sure exactly what I want to do after I graduate, maybe study to become an EMT or even a fireman, but with this virus spreading no one knows how next school year is gonna happen. It might all be online and I don’t think I would really like that. Though many of us are going through tough times because of COVID-19, there are good things that could come out of this. I’m working out again, getting closer and spending time with family, and developing new, better habits. My experience at Yellow Springs is one that I couldn’t imagine a couple years ago, but it became a reality and there isn’t a single thing I would change about it. With all the loss and sadness that I’ve dealt with through this senior year it has brought me closer to the people I love most: my family, friends and myself. I’ve learned to not take life or people for granted and live everyday like it’s your last. In 10 years I see myself having my dream job, a girlfriend (possibly wife), maybe a family of my own where I won’t have to worry about problems like the coronavirus. I want to be financially stable and make sure my mom is taken care of to the best of my ability, keep the relationship I have with my siblings and just live my best life. No one is really sure whether we’ll be able to walk across the stage and get our diplomas, but what I know is that the time I got to spend being a senior was one of the best times of my life. Kane Pindell No response submitted. Evelyn Potter Parents/guardians: Rebecca Potter, Frank Goetzke In sixth grade, my neighbor asked me to take care of her beloved and very old cat, who needed three meals a day. I made it my mission to not let this cat die under my watch. On the last day before my neighbor came home, there was a big snowstorm. I had just come back from a school dance and went straight to my neighbor’s house to feed the cat. Shivering in my dress, I punched in the five digit code to the garage door. It didn’t open. I punched it in again. It didn’t open. It turned out that the power was off because of the storm. I thought about calling my neighbor, but her phone number was on a sticky note on the fridge of her house, which I could not enter. This would have been a lot easier if I had a cell phone, but my parents insisted that I wait until eighth grade to get a phone. So I ran back to my house and asked my mom for help. Together, we walked a couple of houses up the block to see if someone else might have the phone number. We got the number from a nice neighbor who cheerfully reassured me that it was no problem that I had woken him up. I called the cat lady and she told me that there was a spare key under a rock by the door. I was so relieved and we went to look for the key. A couple of my neighbors were having a bonfire and when they heard my dilemma one offered to help, bringing a giant flashlight with him. Our troop dug through the six inches of snow on the ground and looked under every rock that we could find. Eventually we found the key. Everyone cheered and I was able to feed the cat. These are the moments I will remem- ber from growing up in Yellow Springs. This town instilled in me the value of community that I will never forget. I have been lucky to be part of some really great sports teams — cross country and cheerleading. I have been able to go on some fun adventures with my friends, and I have had teachers who would stop in the hall to have conversations with me. I never expected to spend the last months of my senior year talking to my teach- ers through cameras on my computer and “hanging out” with my friends over Zoom. I guess we will see what the future has to hold. As of right now, I am very excited to be majoring in biochemistry at the Ohio University Honors Tutorial College next semester. I also plan to go onto medical school and become a doctor; if we ever have another pandemic, hopefully I’ll be able to help out. Emily Ranard Parents/guardians: Deb Ranard, Linda Warren After completing 12 years of school at Yellow Springs, I can truly say how lucky I am to be a part of such a great community. I went to a county school for kindergarten and my two moms said I was the only dark-skinned child and they were most definitely the only out lesbians in the entire elementary school system. The other parents and kids were polite, but there was always a wall around our family, and it was obvious that we were never going to fit in. That community had social distancing down before it became a thing. After open-enrolling in Yellow Springs for first grade, I began making friendships that I plan on keep- ing forever. The community here focuses on ways to include, not exclude, people. My senior year has not been what I thought a senior year should be. I watched my older sister go to prom and have a clap-out at the end of the senior year. For my senior year I do not know if we are even going to have a graduation. I am not complaining, I am just sad and O u r S p o n s o r s