But will the newly minted adults, many who fell behind academically and socially, be ready for college and careers after a pandemic dramatically shortened their high school experience?
Diego Camacho, 18, is excited about attending the University of California Los Angeles next school year, although it means he will sleep in his car most nights. Camacho will take the often more than two-hour commute to his family home in East Los Angeles a few times a week to do laundry and take showers.
He is excited about the potential to meet new people at the university. The science communications major worked on theand would like to be a science writer for a news organization in the future. Peebles doesn’t think he is behind academically because of distance learning. During the pandemic he took courses virtually at UCLA and a Fresno community college, earning A’s in each class.
Kayla Merkel and her boyfriend, Sam, were winter homecoming royalty at Elk Grove High School in January. She will attend Cosumnes River College in Sacramento in the fall. Payton Zarceno, center, and her classmates at Mt. SAC Early College Academy in West Covina celebrate their acceptance to various universities. Zarceno will attend UCLA in the fall.
Victor Contreras graduated from Cosumnes Oaks HIgh School in Elk Grove last month. He will attend San Diego State University. Zarceno and Nicholas Harvey were still shopping for dorm roommates last month. Both were asked to fill out lifestyle questionnaires to help them find compatible matches. The forms ask questions about the time students go to bed, whether they smoke or drink, what room temperature they prefer and whether they turn on music or the television while studying.
“I am worried about the two years of socializing that I lost, but I’m confident that college will give me the time and space to make up for it,” she said. Torres was unable to get into any of the colleges she wanted to attend, so next fall she will attend community college with the hope that she gets a spot at UC Berkeley, UC Davis or UC Santa Barbara the following school year to study political science.
Jennifer Tran also would like to continue the advocacy work that she began during the pandemic. She wrote or advocated for more than a dozen legislative bills to aid California students as the policy director for GENup, a student-led social justice organization, while attending Bolsa Grande High School in Garden Grove. She also completed a term as the student member of the Garden Grove Unified School Board.
“People start to understand they are breaking off from each other,” he said. “Some try to cling on. Some try to break it off early. No matter what, it is hard for both parties. The school year is very difficult to get through. Everything I’ve heard from every single senior is that if school ended right now they would cry tears of joy.”
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