CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Coronavirus cut the school year short and for the class of 2020, that meant missing out on important milestones and celebrations.
CMS is holding virtual graduation ceremonies this week and even though schools been out for months, a Providence High School student decided to make the best of the situation, using his time off to put together a video for his classmates. It wasn’t for a grade, but to say goodbye to his classmates.
It’s a love letter to the class of 2020.
“We didn't really get a goodbye,” says Cameron Leslie, a senior at Providence High School.
He directed, filmed and edited a 2 minutes video “Wait With Us.”
“Just remembering everyone who’s helped you along the way, everyone you've shared a memory with, every friendship, even if you're not friends with them anymore, every relationship even if you're not in that relationship anymore. Just not having any ill feelings towards your past and where you came from,” says Leslie.
The video is set to the words written by 6 other seniors. Part of it says, “breathe with us, fresh air under clear blue skies, medical masks gone."
“It felt like a really nice bonding moment for us that we wouldn't usually get to have at graduation,” says Charlotte Beck, one of the seniors who wrote the poem.
Their final year of school, everything they worked 12 years for, was cut short in the blink of an eye. Their class and senior year experience was changed by coronavirus and for many, this video brings some closure in place of all of the celebrations that were canceled or changed.
“I think the video really, it really projected what we wanted to with the poem. I think it says really well what we're all feeling,” says Emma Kurtz, another senior who wrote the poem.