By Carson A
Dresses, tuxedos, good vibes, and high school memories are on the horizon. This Saturday, September 18, 2021 from 8 - 11pm, Mountain Range Students will have their 2021 - 2022 school year homecoming. Excitement, anxiety, and last minute preparations fill the air as students ponder on the question, how will the night go? How will their before, during, and after plans end up? Optimism is the best solution for short term answers, but only time will reveal the concrete ones.
The 2021 - 2022 school year homecoming was different from previous years. This year’s homecoming took place at North Stadium. Due to COVID-19, precautions were taken. Luckily for students, masks were not required since the event was outdoors. Social distancing was not required either, with students stacked on top of each other in the mosh pit. With the change in location, I asked a couple students their opinions, “It feels a lot more open, it makes me feel more comfortable,” and they were positive, “I like the fact that there is this area in the back that is close to everyone else but off on its own”. Will Mountain Range continue this style of homecoming in the future if students like it enough?
The hope of school dances is that everyone has a good time, school dances can be associated with good or bad memories. We’ve all gone to a school dance at one point or another and had differing experiences. We all have different expectations and motivations to go, and our outcomes are all different. What’s important is how we interpret our experience. An experience can be viewed a thousand different ways, it all depends on how you look at it and what you focus on. If your experience was positive, embrace the positive; if negative, search deeper and far away from the surface in order to gain a new perspective.
In order to understand more about homecoming and student’s perspectives/plans, I conducted a few interviews. The responses I got were all similar throughout many of the questions. The before and after plans of students consisted of grabbing food and hanging out with friends; their biggest motivating factor was their friends and or date. No students I interviewed went with the theme, instead they chose to wear formal clothes such as dresses and button up shirts. Optimism wasn’t too high among students, expectations remained low, “I’m not really optimistic because after the coronavirus everything got disorganized” Although, those with a date remained highly optimistic and were excited to dance with each other. Many students didn’t expect to stay too long as well, they all said that they were planning on leaving early once they and their friends grew bored. When I asked students what is something different they want to try at this year’s homecoming, I got all different responses. One student said she wants to be more free, another said she wants to be more optimistic, another said he is excited to dance with his date. We all had a collective, similar experience when it came to homecoming, but it's the small individual experiences that we cherish and hold on to. As a follow up to homecoming, I conducted a few informal interviews with some students. Solely asking for their broad experience, and the feedback I received was positive. While some students found the event to be slightly disappointing, they made the best of their time with their friends and had a good time because of that.
Homecoming and homecoming week is always an exciting and busy week. So much happens in such a short amount of time and it goes away with a blink of an eye. There is so much effort put in by students, parents, teachers, staff, and other volunteers in order to make all the events come to life and their work is greatly appreciated and generally unacknowledged. Thank you to everyone who makes these events possible, without you our high school experience would not be the same.