Published by Vogue, August 14, 2020.
The recent high school graduate A’Lyric Thomas was planning to work this summer in her hometown in New Orleans to save for college in the fall when the pandemic put her restaurant job to an end. Now her sun-soaked Louisiana days are spent sleeping, penning poetry, and participating in Black Lives Matter campaigns or baking butter pecan cakes in her kitchen.
As a member of the graduating class of 2020, Thomas is no stranger to adapting to change. Her generation arrived in the world in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, several are the babies of the Hurricane Katrina era, and many of them watched their families struggle through the post-Bush financial collapse. Now, in 2020, a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic has forced the class of 2020 to forego their senior proms while they shelter in place at home, spend too many 18th birthday parties siloed among four walls, and celebrate their high school graduations in the glow of glitch-filled Zoom calls.
Meanwhile, protests calling out racial injustices and police brutality have swept through the streets of our nation. Often the class of 2020 had led the charge, holding up protest signs like “Enough Is Enough” and “We Breathe the Same Air.”
And the coronavirus numbers keep climbing. Some of the cities that have been hardest hit by COVID-19 include Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Detroit, and New Orleans. And it’s worth noting our nation is once again on the brink of economic collapse, with unemployment numbers remaining on the rise.
How does the class of 2020 feel about its future? What do their college plans look like when each day often looks so different from the day before? I spoke to several recent 2020 graduates in some areas in the U.S. that have been especially impacted by COVID-19 about their lives in quarantine, college plans, and hopes and dreams for our uncertain future. The women—all 18 years old—also shared their photos and journal entries from their own perspectives, because this change-charged generation is not one to be silenced.
A’Lyric Thomas photographed by Rayvan Bellazer, a student at Louisiana State University
““You Don’t Really Get to Say Goodbye”
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A’Lyric Thomas is a New Orleans native and poet. She is quarantining with her pregnant aunt, uncle, two brothers, and grandmother. “My family is very high risk, so I couldn’t take part in any protests—that really upset me,” she says. She will be attending Louisiana State University Alexandria (LSUA) in the fall and living on campus where she’s planning on studying psychology.*
Akilah Toney, with her father, Albert Smith, photographed by her 15-year-old sister, Amaya Smith
““There Are Different Forms of Activism””
Akilah Toney is a New Orleans writer, artist, and dancer who lives with her parents, sister, and German shepherd. Since she was young, she remembers watching her family members’ own celebratory high school graduation ceremonies. “I couldn’t wait for the day it was me—and it was taken away from me,” she says. Toney will be attending Loyola University Louisiana in the fall. She plans to live on campus and study psychology and African American studies.
As an artist, I’ve learned that being an activist doesn’t have to mean carrying a sign to a protest all the time, which is a completely valid way to protest and resist oppression and classism. But there are different forms of activism. I found myself doing some writing and allowing myself to explore different forms of art. I think that’s the beauty of what’s going on with the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s so expansive and given so many things to different people in different ways, especially for Black youth. It all looks so different when you see the huge amount of protests that young people are leading. I’m happy to be part of a generation that doesn’t just take what is offered. We demand what is not being given to us, especially Black youth, because of the resilience we have, growing up with Hurricane Katrina. It’s not by choice.
I have a few family members who contracted the coronavirus, but fortunately they self-isolated. They were able to get well and back in shape. I was very thankful for that. I’m grateful today that I could see them because a lot of other people don’t get to. I think it’s so easy to be desensitized by just seeing a number. And these are actual people in our communities dying.
I find myself fantasizing and dreaming up a different world where the people, the little kids who will come up after me, will have a different future and live in a different society. I imagine parents will not have to worry about sending their child to school, and then we won’t have the pandemic because they’ll have access to online learning and great, amazing teachers who are well paid. I also imagine a world without capitalism—and that means humanization for us as Black people. This also makes me emotional because sometimes it can be so hard to do this—imagine all of this, but sometimes all we have is our imagination. Our dreams. I think that’s the beauty of Black imagination, that’s how we survived so long. We’ve been imagining different possibilities for generations of Black people. Black people are the original futurists. All we have is that we’re thinking about a different life.
Asiyah Herrera's journal
““Those Two Deaths Back-to-Back Were Jarring””
Asiyah Herrera lives in Boston. She was homeschooled throughout high school, so the day-to-day of her senior-year classroom experience didn’t change much. But with the pandemic, she lost a lot of freedoms that come with being 18 and living in a big city, like riding the train and meeting up with friends or going to the mall or the beach. She is spending time in quarantine with her five siblings, father, grandmother, and pregnant mother. Her uncle contracted the coronavirus but has since recovered. She was planning to attend Simmons College, a private women’s college in Boston, until the university decided to make its fall semester online.
We don’t have a gigantic house, so we’re all kind of breathing down each other’s necks. At the start of the pandemic, I nearly went crazy when I found out that we were all going to be home. I was like, “This is not going to work. I will be dead before coronavirus is gone.” I was convinced I would not survive.
That was a little overdramatic—but it was very overwhelming. The only space for me to do work was the kitchen table, but people were constantly coming in and out. I tried my best to create a schedule where I would wake up, get my coffee, and sit down to get started on my work by about 10 a.m. My work time wasn’t very productive; I often ended up working late at night when the house was quiet. Because of that, my parents and I have decided to defer my enrollment until next semester. It’s also because I realized that I’ve been homeschooled my whole life. My school has predominantly been online. I didn’t apply to college so that I could do it online, right?
When I found out about the death of George Floyd, I was not shocked. And that hurts to say because it should not be normal for someone to die. But I was completely devastated, and part of why was not only because of how he died but also knowing that Ahmaud Arbery had also just died. And those two deaths back-to-back were jarring. There was a lot of—and there are [still] a lot of—protests in Boston. They’re very peaceful, and they’ve been going on for weeks and weeks and weeks. They’re not covered by television, mostly because we’re not violent. So there’s no need to give us attention, I guess.
There has been a lot of conversation between my friends and peers—part of us really wishes that this pandemic was not happening right now. And it’s almost like, Why did it have to happen right now? Like, could I just be a little older or a little younger? Or could this just have not happened right now? Regardless, when I’m 25 or 45, I’m going to want to remember my own quarantine—being next to each other all the time and almost killing each other. But it was also kind of fun.
Tracey Troung with her dog, Coco, photographed by her 18-year-old cousin Chelsea Tran
““I’m Kind of Scared””
Tracey Truong lives in Los Angeles with her mom and three dogs. She was recently the Associated Student Body president at her high school, where she also played varsity volleyball and basketball and was cocaptain of her golf team. When California’s stay-at-home order shut down her school, one of her biggest challenges was writing essays on her sometimes-faulty Los Angeles Unified School District–issued Chromebook, so she wrote them on her phone. But that didn’t stop Troung from being named the salutatorian at her school. Troung is attending the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles in the fall remotely and plans to study chemical engineering. USC recently made headlines for a COVID-19 outbreak of at least 40 cases among students living in the college’s Greek row.
Most of my classes are going to be online now. And I’m going to stay at home since I live so close to USC already. It’s very sudden that I had to make this change. I already had bought everything for my dorm room. And then it was like, you won’t get housing anymore. So, what do I do with all this stuff now? We already picked our roommates. We already started getting decorations so that our beds aren’t going to clash or anything.
My roommate is becoming my best friend, and I’ve never met her in person, which is kind of crazy. She’s from a small town, Gilroy, California. I was really excited to show her around L.A. I was going to take her to Griffith Park because her town has a lot of mountains and it’s kind of like our big mountain here. We text a lot on Instagram and Snapchat, and sometimes if we’re doing something special, then we snap pictures of what’s happening. Still, I’m kind of scared of the social aspect of college this year because I’m not getting to meet as many people as I was hoping to. I really wanted to have that college experience.
When I first found out about the death of George Floyd, it was shocking. I didn’t know how to react. I cried for a few days because I felt helpless. I didn’t know what to do. I feel like, I just graduated high school, I’m about to enter college, am I really an adult? I didn’t participate in any political activism because I would watch the news and I would see people getting pepper-sprayed. My friend went to a protest, and I saw he posted pouring milk over his eyes—that was just too scary for me.
Nancy Lopez in her East Los Angeles bedroom, photographed by her 17-year-old friend Maryleysis Armenta
““My Family Had Everything Planned Out” ”
Nancy Lopez is a soccer player and active community volunteer who lives with her brother, mom, and English bulldog in East Los Angeles. One of her friends recently contracted the coronavirus, to her surprise, which strengthened her resolve to stay home, where she is learning cooking skills, occasionally taking her dog for walks, and studying for college-placement exams. Lopez is attending Menlo College, a small liberal-arts college in the Bay Area. She decided to study remotely and stay in L.A. for the fall semester, and she plans to study political science.
I actually turned 18 the day that everything shut down on March 16. I perfectly remember ’cause for my birthday I usually always go out to eat and have dinner with my family. So that Sunday my mom was like, ‘Hey, do you want to go out to eat today?’ And I was like, ‘No, I’d rather wait for the actual day,’ which was the next day. And then I’m trying to pick out where I want to go out to eat when the news releases come out that everything’s going to be shut down the next day—I was so upset about that. But then I stopped complaining because there’s a lot of essential workers still out there who are risking the health of their family for someone and people are dying globally.
My graduation was online. So it was kind of messy in the sense that the audio didn’t match what was going on with the slideshow that they made. So they were showing our cap-and-gown pictures on the screen, and then they would say the names of the people, and the person they were saying in the audio didn’t exactly match the pictures that were being displayed on the screen. That was pretty upsetting because you at least want it to be accurate and it to be something very nice.
I was actually gonna move and leave for college on August 14. My family had everything planned out; my brother and my mom were going to be the ones who drove me to school. I had everything ready, my family had everything planned, we were gonna get this hotel, they were even gonna get a couple days off work to drop me off at the school. So everything was planned out. And then my school gave us the option to actually go to campus or be online. I decided to stay here in L.A. because either way I’m going to just be in a room by myself.
Yahnee Acklin snapped a selfie while visiting her grandmother in Kansas City, Missouri, just before the pandemic.
““I Don’t Really See a Lot of People Wearing Masks””
Yahnee Acklin lives in Philadelphia, and she says her mom has been saying she knew she wanted to be a pediatrician since she was seven years old. This fall she leaves for Carleton College, a small liberal-arts school in Northfield, Minnesota, where she plans to live on campus and study biology and premed courses. She’s currently living with her mom and sister and visits her grandmother as often as she safely can.
I do have asthma, and I’m hearing that people with asthma are some of the most vulnerable to the coronavirus. [Me and] my family members are Black—we have a higher chance of dying, basically. One of my uncles had COVID about a month ago. Thank God he’s perfectly fine and back to normal. He had stomach cancer last year. I was really scared for him—I became really close to him the past couple of years.
I don’t really see a lot of people wearing masks. It’s almost as if COVID isn’t really a thing. But when you go to the grocery stores, it’s mandated by law, so everybody in the store is wearing masks and things like that. But if I go somewhere like New Jersey, I don’t really see a lot of people wearing masks when they enter stores or when you’re just walking outside. I feel like it’s kind of selfish when I see people not wearing masks.
The biggest challenge for me is the fact that I am now 18 years old and this summer was supposed to be the summer that I really branched out and did a lot of fun things with my friends. But because of COVID, I can’t really leave the house, I can’t really do much. Nothing is open. And it’s just a safety hazard, you know? So it’s really sucky because this was the last thing I would have hoped to happen for my senior year of high school before I go off to college.
I’ve also gone long periods without ever leaving the house. My sister lives in Louisiana and decided to come home for the summer, and she was telling me it’s not healthy to not go outside for two weeks at a time. So I started going on walks. We have a balcony, so sometimes I go out on the balcony and talk with her. But if I could I would stay in my room for as long as my body will.