2020: The year we hit rock bottom, and it hit us back

Megan Grove Year 12 student MacRobertson Girls High School Melbourne

When I pictured my final year of high school I didn’t really picture this, I don’t think many of us did. And when they told us 'these are the best years of your lives', and when they said 'make the most of it', I don’t think they imagined this. I don’t know many people that would have; it's a twisted sort of premonition if you did.

Instead of dances and sports games, debating and discussions, instead of chatting in class, and getting takeaway after events, instead of all that, I sat at home. I made the most of Zoom calls, daily emails and group chats. I think I’ve seen more of my video camera than I have my own school.

I have to say, when I pictured my last year of high school, I did not picture it at my desk, in my bedroom, alone. Call me crazy but I was a bit more optimistic than that.

We are missing too much already. Things I thought were guarantees, things I took for granted. My formal dress, bought in great anticipation, hung up in the hope that we would eventually be able to have that promised gala evening, is starting to look a little limp.

Then, this. Apparently the Government will pay less per student and I will pay more. And because I am a humanities student, a lot more. And if I hadn’t pictured quarantine, I don’t know how I would have even comprehended this. I didn’t have time to duck this one.

We are missing too much already and now we are to choose $45,000 or our dreams? As if this time wasn’t confusing, alienating, frustrating enough, let’s just make it that little bit more heartbreaking. Actually, 113% more heartbreaking to be exact. A 113% increase, that is what they have decided caring for others will cost us; what communications, history, behavioural science, philoso- phy will cost us.

And it’s not that there’s a price on my dreams – I’ve always known that, resigned myself to it a long time ago – it’s that it’s been ranked side by side with others, and has failed to measure up; I have come up short, drawn the short straw. They have looked at our passions, our potential for progress, and they have looked the other way.

It’s that my sister completed an arts degree and she will walk away with half of the student debt I will. It’s that my friend told me she used to regret enduring her Maths and Chemistry classes, but, after this, she is grateful. It’s that I had to listen to her tell me how hard it was to convince her parents to allow her to pursue her interests in the human- ities; convincing them it’s what she wants, what she loves. It’s that, now, she is going to change her whole life. She is the youngest of three sisters. Her parents can’t afford her interests anymore – another punch to the gut.

It’s that my whole life I have loved the humanities, they’ve given me everything. When I moved to a new state, a new system, I chose them above everything else. Where maths was difficult and exhausting, history was my safe haven. Where science was memorisation and confusion, philosophy was escape; literature contemplation; politics an avenue through which I thought there could be change – I could make change – for the better. Now, I’m not so sure, that little bit less steadfast.

I am secure – with a family who has saved for me, going to a good school, getting good enough grades – and I will go on, but others will turn away. Others will be hit harder and it will do exactly what it was intended to do. They will turn away, discouraged by a tax on what I previously (appar- ently naively) thought of as priceless subjects and invaluable lessons.

We are missing too much already and now they’re doing everything they can to make us turn away, make us miss this too. It sure packs a punch. •

On the day Meg submitted this article, a positive case was detected at her school. The Year 12s, after being sent back to school for two weeks in Term 3, are once again studying in isolation.