Dear Bingham,

While my high school experience has been hindered by COVID-19, my years spent at Bingham have been some of the best years of my life. The activities and classes I have taken will stay with me forever. The relationships that I have created here will last a lifetime. While half of my high school experience has been taken away by the pandemic, it will still be something to remember.

Senior year has been crazy and full of twists and turns. With the limited activities and assemblies, it has been a bit hard to get into the senior year spirit. I have gone to as many activities as I could, and tried to participate in everything. But it has still been hard. With all the online closures we had at the beginning of the year it was difficult to keep up and find the time to still have fun. While online classes made for easier school days with more free time, I still missed being at school in person. Online school made me so grateful for the school experience that we had before the school closure.

I loved the opportunities I had to learn beyond just in the classroom here. Being in Cupcake Club, FCCLA, and Interact Club, throughout high school was super fun. I loved being able to help serve other people, learn new skills, and just do awesome things like make cupcakes with friends. After school club meetings and activities helped me take a break from homework and focus on helping others or making my friends’ day better. Handing out cupcakes to random kids in the hallway and teachers are memories that make me smile. Being able to do that now, is hard to imagine, but I am grateful that I was able to be part of these great clubs. Memories of cupcake wars, region competition results, and making blankets will be ones that I cherish. 

Newspaper was one of my favorite classes. I was nervous about joining last year, and then it ended up being one of the best classes. I love the relationship that everyone in that class has. We are all friends, and we talk about things and find new articles to write about. We have fun and are able to work together to make an awesome newspaper. It has been an amazing class and has helped me to expand my writing skills.

Being in Madrigals senior year has always been a dream of mine, and so when I got to be part of that tradition, I was stoked. I am so grateful for being part of the Madrigal family. I loved going around and singing Madrigrams to people during Valentine’s. And practicing the school hymn for an assembly is something that will always be in my heart. I loved being with my friends in this class and creating music together.

While I can’t name every other class that I am grateful for, I am glad that I was able to get the classes I had in person. Other seniors might have never been able to be in person this year, and I am so glad I was able to. Being able to take classes like foods and sewing are things that I was worried I would miss out on because of restrictions. I am thankful for the teachers and classes that I was able to have despite the limitations.

The time and experiences that I missed during my senior year makes it harder to leave. We missed out on assemblies with the whole school, going to games, and going to dances with friends. It has been hard to miss out on all the past traditions. I missed all the things that I was waiting for senior year to do—things that I pushed off sophomore year because I would have time to do them senior year. I wish that I had paid more attention to the end of year traditions and gone to more games and activities that year. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would go to more activities and live in the moment. 

But, we survived another year of school. And while I am sad that I missed out on things, I will look back at this year, and remember all the good things that happened and experiences I had. I will always remember how special Bingham was to me, and how big of a difference it has made in my life.

Thank you Bingham,

Hannah Blankman