As South Dakota seniors eagerly anticipate graduation 2021, some took time to reflect and share with South Dakota Public Broadcasting how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their last year of high school. Today we hear from a Rapid City Stevens High School Senior.
"My name is Abby Scott and I’m a senior at Stevens High School in Rapid City South Dakota.
"I started in 6th grade and actually went to Sturgis Middle School in 7th grade and didn’t’ have the best band experience just because they didn’t place as big an emphasis on the arts there. So, I was really hesitant to do it my 8th grade year, but my mom said, “just try it one more year and if you don’t like it, then that’s OK and you can not play,” so then I joined it 8th grade year, and yeah, there’s no way I could quit band. I really like it.
"I love the environment because it’s a whole different crowd of people and it allows me to meet a bunch of different people than I would not meet in classes or work.
"A drum major is basically the conductor of the marching band.
"So because I am drum major, I’m interacting with a bunch of different sections.
"It’s impacted things a lot, not necessarily band events are cancelled, they are just all virtual. I used to be used to my parents coming to concerts and recording me and I could watch it and stuff, now we record during class and then I just watch the concert with them at home. Really weird experience I guess.
"I think I’ve realized to just take events as you have them because nothing is guaranteed. So, we don’t’ know certain events will happen or like even a get togethers how long they’re going t6o be able to hang out. So, I’m just realized its imported to take what we have because our marching season actually was cut short because almost the entire football team got COVID. The Central Football Team we were supposed to play, so we were not able to have our last game, made me realize the last game we had was our last game.
"I realize it is more important to live in the moment because I don’t know how many moments I’m going to have, whenever I do have in person I don’t take it for granted."