When I took my final exam a few years ago, the theme of my research was resilience. Resilience is by definition the capacity of a material to return to its usual shape after being bent, stretched, or pressed. It is not difficult to see how human beings own this ability too: we often bend and even more often we stand back up.
The class of 2021 is definitely resilient. Young graduates, after one year of online learning and social distancing, are about to take their final exam. Are we sure, however, that they have not “graduated” already?
While the class of 2020 had been able to go to school regularly until March, students of this year came back in person in April only, switching from online learning to normal classes. As a consequence, the final exam in Italy has been modified ad hoc, considering the difficulties they have been through since the end of their fourth year.
As for last year, no written exams are going to take place. Instead, there will be one oral test of one hour circa. In this oral test, the student will be asked to discuss his own research, comment of a piece of Italian literature and analyst the material that the commission will put forward, trying to link it to the different disciplines and their own Pcto experience (that is, the school-work extracurricular).
The research, a 2021 version of a classic in the Italian Esame di Stato formerly known as “tesina”, will cover the major subjects of the particular degree, such as latin and ancient greek for classics, or mathematic and physics for the scientific high school.
With only one people to accompany them, face masks in their hands, graduates will show up not earlier than 15 minutes before the oral test, in order to avoid crowds. Following the predisposed paths, they will sit in the class following social distancing. Only once seated the student will be able to remove the face mask. In front of him will stand a commission of internal members, with only one being external and coming from a different school: the president of the commission.
While the world seems to slowly go back to normal, for the class of 2021 there is still one obstacle. However, it seems they are going to meet it with with resilience and self-consciousness. “On one hand, I am serene because it feels like I am already outside high school. Of course I want to end this journey well enough for myself, but I am not striving to a certain grade. What we all need is a break, after two years deprived of social contacts. The exam is going to be a bit of a lottery”, tells Eleonora from Liceo Classico F. Vivona of Rome.
The situation might justifies the confusion around the research students ought to present at the oral discussion, which has been interpreted differently by both teachers and students: “Some though it had to be a comprehensive research, other that it should be focused on latin and greek exclusively”, explains Eleonora.
Moreover, the preparation of this research has been simultaneous to the return to in person classes, meaning that it was also the moment teachers needed to catch up on tests and get the grades they needed from students: “When we were online learning, teachers did not always trust us, so when we came back in person we had tons of tests until the very last day of school. Meanwhile, we had to prepare our research and start revising the whole programs of the year”. In short, it hasn’t been an easy start for these kids.
Benedetta, another senior of Vivona, is more philosophic, and she looks at the final exam with a touch of nostalgia, knowing it is the end of a long journey that the pandemic made more difficult: “As of today, I feel a mixture of sensations and contrasting emotions, which I think is what has united, unites and will unite graduates of all times, this mix of feelings that not even a global pandemic can stop”.
As for every sphere of life, the virus has given the chance to students to stop and appreciate the small joys that high school can give: “Covid-19 has taken from us many traditions (which are a special here at Vivona) that we would have brought with us outside these four walls, in the world of adults, and it is a bit scary. However, it is also true that personally it made me rediscover that reality that we tend to forget in everyday life: the pillars.
Even during those infinite hours in front of a computer, those pillars would still endure. They could be friendships, those you have had with you since the beginning as well as the new ones; they could be teachers, everyone of them in the good and in the bad has given us something; they could be places, as those four walls you’d just want to tear down when you reached the last of six hours of classes; memories, sounds, places, such as the ring bell or the courtyard. Everything”.
Gabriele, a senior graduate of Vivona as well, doesn’t want to stress too much. He’s happy he has the chance to take the last exam with his classmates and to have reached the end of a very intense year. And reflecting about this past year and about what is coming next, he believes he’s already passed the big test.
“I might be corny, but if I’d have to think of a final exam without the Covid-19 year and distance learning that anticipated it, surely alienating, I wouldn’t be as grown up as I feel today. We all grew up, together.
The real graduation has been to be capable of dealing with this crazy year, the absence of socializing, a life completely twisted in little time. Necessarily, it made me shift my own consolidated schemes that I reasoned with one year and a half ago. Reality changed my plans and my expectations, forcing me to reinvent myself. I have found my resilience, and this is the lesson I will always find useful in life”.
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