Senior focus frenzy

While the autumn leaves are falling, high school seniors’ anxiety surrounding college applications is continuously rising. COVID-19 has impacted students in many ways, but for seniors, the lack of focus on college seems all encompassing. Application due dates are fast approaching and both seniors and counselors are finding ways to stay on track despite COVID’s best efforts to slow students down.

DGS has yearly presentations in place to help students concentrate on their futures all through high school. Counselors continue to provide these resources to students in hope that they will utilize them to their advantage. Counselor Kate Blader believes that the yearly focus presentations are enough to keep students thinking about college.

“Junior year and senior year we really talk a lot about the college application process as well as other career options: military, work, etcetera. Those things are always in place and they remained in place throughout the pandemic and still are today,” Blader said.

A large number of seniors are finding it difficult to jump into the grueling process of college applications. COVID left students and staff more disconnected than ever before which has affected communication. Senior Grace Dietrich feels that application guidance came later than preferred.

“Since we weren’t in school last year we kinda got thrown into it,” Dietrich said.

College and Career Counselor Lavon Robinson shared how the college and career team struggled finding ways to keep students informed.

“It was very difficult. We had to change how we gave out information. We set up a google classroom for [the class of] ‘22 and ‘23. A lot of it was us as college counselors figuring out how [COVID] was changing things,” Robinson said.

With both students and counselors figuring out how to navigate the application process in the new world that COVID has created, there is still hope that seniors will be able to catch up before the Nov. 1 deadline.