Emilia vexler
11/23/2020 6:01 AM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 11/23/2020 7:51 AM
Sunday March 3.
The night before the start of the school year in Argentina.
The fifth and sixth year students prepare to live their
UPD or Last First Day
, a celebration of the first day of the last year of Secondary.
They dance, shout, throw colored powders, drink and arrive at the school gate, where the ritual ends.
The idea is to spend the night together, without sleeping, and enter the classroom like that, overexcited and united.
To the "best year of your life."
No one saw her coming.
The pandemic was about to cut their pogo.
After four days, the City decreed that those who had returned from risk countries such as China and the United States could not attend classes.
Afterward, no one else was able to go to school in the entire country.
In part, until today.
That morning, then, was the last day that the dancing bodies of these adolescents were "loose."
8 months have passed and they still do not dance.
Without being united.
But they graduate anyway.
No trip for graduates, no party and "hating" divers.
They are stories of boys and girls who sang
Bariló, Bariló, nos vamo 'a Bariló.
But
Bariló
never arrived.
Nor will it arrive.
"It is extremely distressing that something you have been dreaming about for 6 years, since you started high school: the trip and the graduation party, cannot be. As much as many people do not understand the magnitude of the anguish, because 'it is only a trip 'or' it's just a fucking night ', I can tell you that I have pictures of when I entered 1st year with the posters that I wanted to put up at the graduation party. None of that is going to be possible. Another option. The options are terrible. You can't do it next year. It's not the same, "says Florencia Lob.
Flower
He is 17 years old, he is from Villa Pueyrredón and he goes to the ORT school in the City of Buenos Aires.
He speaks very fast and very angry.
But there is no doubt that the first thing it conveys is the magnitude of that anguish.
As confirmed by sources from the Buenos Aires Ministry of Education, there will be graduations - technically, degree collations or deliveries of diplomas and medals - in person, in public and private schools.
"The protocol was approved yesterday (on Thursday)
, it was adapted with the existing ones and with the approval of the Ministry of Health of the Nation," they detailed to Clarín.
So, until less than 48 hours ago, seniors didn't even know if they were going to be able to say "bye" to their high school teachers.
Outdoor space will be prioritized in schools - those that do not have a patio can do so in the closest squares -
with a limit of 100 people per act
and 2 companions per graduate.
In closed spaces, no school may exceed 30% of the maximum occupancy and all the "emotion" must be expressed in a 90-minute act.
Uriel
"Nobody imagined graduating in this way. Social ties have been destroyed in these 8 months; that is something that no video call can give you: interaction with your classmates and teachers. I was able to go 3 times to school 2 hours and be with some classmates. That was the best of the quarantined education, being able to see them at least 3 times. There are very sad and anguished students about all this. We are left without parties and graduates' trips. I take it with a bit of anger because I know that the things could be done better and the students were left in the middle of a political dispute totally alien to us ", says Uriel liahaff (17).
"Diver? That didn't exist," he says, from his home in Palermo.
The topic of graduate divers is quite a topic.
The symbol of putting on the course shirt.
Identify yourself in front of the students of the other shift and of the rest of the schools.
In the neighborhood and in Bariloche.
The boys and girls who spoke with
Clarín
for this note spoke of their divers almost with hatred:
There it is, folded!
And we spend money on that!
I can't even look at it!
The presentation of divers in front of the teachers was online, through an edited video.
Another lost ritual.
11-20-2020.
Society.
Argentina coronavirus.
What is it like to graduate from high school in Pandemic.
Lupe Duran and her friends with the graduated divers shirts that could not use Bariloche.
(Photo: Lucía Merle) - FTP CLARIN LUM_0494.JPG Z LMerle Merle
"It was very frustrating for the seniors not to be together in class. But they managed to stay together as a group. They couldn't use their divers as they would have wanted, it's true. But they were seen by Meet (variant of Zoom for virtual classes) that everyone used it from home. In addition, we managed with a system of tutors. To contain them ", explains Mercedes Quernetti, director of St George's College North of Los Polvorines, in the northern area of Greater Buenos Aires.
In the Province there is still no specific protocol on undergraduate
snacks
,
explains Quernetti.
For this reason, that school created a "Planning Committee", so that "no student is left without being able to come, - he says - if it is going to continue with that there can only be 10 boys per course".
It will be a mixed collation, between face-to-face and virtual.
Lupe Duran is 18 years old and is from the Remedios de Escalada neighborhood of Lanús Oeste.
He is in the 6th year of José Manuel Estrada.
"That wasted year I had 'accepted' it, but now the tab began to fall on me that it is over and I get sick," he says.
Not only does it worry him not knowing if there will be a diploma ceremony or not.
Remember that the "straight" passage to college may be more difficult.
He had only 2 face-to-face classes in the year, in March, just after the UPD and just before the quarantine was decreed.
"I started the year without knowing what I was going to study. And in the last year they are supposed to help you choose your career. The first months we spent crying with my friends for not having those moments that everyone told us would be spectacular before college. It was overwhelming. We were depressed. It was only after winter break that we started thinking about college. We did an online vocational test with my friends and it served me a lot. Today I know what Public Relations and Social Communication is Thanks to that I was able to decide, "he details.
For Ramiro Marin Sola (18), from Banfield, in the southern area of Buenos Aires, the group remained united in "small groups" in "rare" encounters.
But the worst thing, he says, is that the last year of high school cannot be passed on to next year.
"An example is the graduates' trip. They tell us that the trip is guaranteed but they don't know when. I'm going to do what the majority do but it is very likely that they will ask for a refund (they would return 75% of what they paid) because they don't it is the same to leave when we finish high school, "he emphasizes.
Santiago Tircornia is a child and adolescent psychologist and coordinator of the school guidance team at Northlands School, with campuses in Nordelta and Olivos.
He talks about rites, rituals and keys that - as the students repeat - will not be able to be.
"The boys go through the last year of secondary school with a series of experiences, of rites, that contribute a lot to elaborating the duels that they have to do about their schooling. All these rites are the key to closing that educational path and opening the door to What is coming. In that sense, they start with the UPD, outside the school, they release their diver and other rituals of each school. The reality is that only some boys were able to sustain these rituals. The vast majority of schools did not He did it, "explains Tiscornia.
The Northlands is one of the most exclusive colleges in the country.
A whole team will take care of the graduation of these students, with spaces available for a "careful" meeting.
That is why the psychologist marks the dichotomy with the rest of the realities of the boys in the last year of high school.
But the feelings, so strong, because of the "lost", are not changed according to the school fee.
Martin
"Something very symbolic is that last week, when we met the boys again, it was 25 degrees and they were all with their graduate divers. It was the need to still feel like students. Not to burn stages. What happens with those divers is very graphic. in general in all. It is to show 'I am a 17-year-old student in the last year of high school. Here I am. Look at me.'
Martín Palla is 17 years old and goes to that school.
He's used to being told:
Too bad you missed last year. '
"At first it was shocking, 'to lose' that. But it changed with the passing of the quarantine. We did not lose it, we had to live it in a different way. Clearly that emotion, those expectations, were never the same again. But the magic of the Last year is the union that is formed between the litter. It also united us, all of us (throughout the country) going through the same situation. "
Bariló
never arrived.
And that pogo, which is also an adolescent symbol of togetherness and celebration, is not going to return for this group of students.
Or it will, in the future, in a different way.