By: Alex Mueller, Editor in Training
SIGNOFF: Principal Darel Hansen bids Poly’s class of 2022 farewell.
With mask mandates not lifted until March 2022 and a return to normalcy only recently on the horizon, Poly’s graduating class embodies a unique resilience and significant turning point in the school’s history. As Poly’s principal throughout this unique high school experience, Darel Hansen champions the senior’s class’ distinct position, citing the notable nature of 2022.
Poly’s 2022 senior class arrived as Freshmen in the 2018-2019 school year, endured through their sophomore year and the tumultuous beginning of 2020, and persevered throughout a Covid-stricken 2021. However, despite significant years of their high school experience vanishing, they exemplified resilience. “There are moments as a principal,” Hansen notes, “when I walk around [and] I feel like it’s 2019 or 2017”; the senior class did not “say woe is me” but attempted to enshrine normalcy and “move forward,” beyond the pandemic. Notably, upperclassmen “have shown underclassmen how to be resilient.” As seniors “set the path” for advancement, underclassmen not only witnessed, but invested themselves in the process of change. In other words, 2022 seniors, positioned between the realities of COVID-19 and its declining influence, championed a unique transition to a revamped normalcy, leading an entire school on a path to progress.
To Hansen, this school year represented a time of unique change and noteworthy return. “The fact that we were back as a whole,” Hansen recalls “was definitely a moment for me.” Incidents such as “the first football game,” where celebrations of school culture reignited, and the end of “temperature checks,” where “students could just walk into campus,” embodied a significant shift from past realities. Particularly, the “very first pep rally in the Polywood Bowl” stood out to Hansen as a landmark never seen before in Poly’s history. According to the principal, the school “has [truly] bounced back” from previous years of hardship.
Overtime, seniors grow; indeed, Hansen recalls several past “conversations with a couple students,” who, in later years, “matured [both] physically” and “mentally.” Yet, as Hansen emphasizes, seniors are still “18 [to 17] years old” – they still maintain a vast future, where they can “chase [their] dream.” He ultimately accentuates the need for the graduating class “to take advantage of the opportunities that are in front of [them]”; he accentuates the need for seniors to maintain an active life beyond high school. Even juniors, the seniors of tomorrow, Hansen asserts should “start getting [the] mindset… for being successful” and maintaining personal and academic success. Henceforth, Hansen advocates an integral lesson for both seniors and underclassmen: individual growth and one’s ability to further their condition never ceases, particularly at a young age.
According to Hansen, future years at Poly shall embody a spirit of “moving forward,” with the school continuing to prepare “students to move for their [own] future.” Yet, as the 2022 senior class departs, Poly’s principle remains proud for the senior class, exuding his inner pride for their accomplishments as Poly students and, in his concluding remarks, stressing the hope for them to “[make] a difference in the world.”