Dear College Seniors...

If you're reading this and not a college senior, take it from us, the Class of 2020...

When people tell you college will be the best four years of your life, please listen. They're right.

Senior year is supposed to be exciting.

You're finishing up your last months of classes, spending time with your friends, and looking forward to all senior year will bring. Sounds fun right? For us, it's been a whirlwind of emotions.

The beginning of senior year was exciting. We made it to our last year of college together. Graduation felt like something so far away and out of our reach. We looked forward to all of our senior events throughout the whole year and finishing our experience with our friends. Now imagine it all being taken away from you. Just like that.

The Corona Virus pandemic has completely changed and taken away college seniors last moments. Final weeks of classes have been cancelled and moved to online instruction, senior week events cancelled, and graduation ceremonies have even been cancelled. The last moments of our college experience have been completely ripped away from us, without warning.

We've worked all of our lives for these moments. We've completed all of our years of school, suffered through the high school years, applied to college and got in, and now it's time to celebrate all of our hard work...yet we can't. There is no ceremony or celebration.

It's all over when we weren't ready for it to be over at all.

We didn't know our last class we sat in, was going to be the last class we would ever have. We didn't know the last time we went out with friends would be our last night out in college. We didn't know our last night in our house living with our roommates would be our last night all together, for what would seem like an eternity.

We were supposed to have our last weeks of college spent with our friends. We were supposed to be going out together, staying up late, and complaining about the finals we would have the next morning. We don't have any of this.

Now we're forced to leave our beloved college towns and our best friends. We've been told to go back to our hometowns and wait it out with our families. Complete our online classes and then what? A diploma mailed to our homes? We all can agree on the fact that we did not work hard all throughout college to get a piece of paper in the mail.

The saddest part is...there is nothing we can do. We just have to let it happen. There are no answers.

It breaks my heart and brings me to tears thinking about how this has happened to us at a time that is supposed to be the most exciting part of our lives and is now full of negativity, uncertainty, and worry.

This isn't the way our college experience was supposed to end, but we did it. Maybe not the way we planned, but we still made it through. So, congratulations to the Class of 2020. We are all going through it together and we are going to be okay.

Spend this time taking care of yourselves and your health, as well as spending time with family because they are so proud of you.