So ever since quarantine started I’ve been struggling with acceptance. Acceptance that things are no longer the same as they used to be and they will never be again. And honestly, a part of me just does not know how to accept that. I don’t know how to accept the fact that I might not have the graduation that I worked so hard for. I worked for it a lot longer than just 4 years that’s when it started counting I guess but I worked for the moment where I walk up to that stage sit down to listen to some speeches and then walk across the stage to receive my diploma for fourteen years, Preschool all the away to now. I can’t even begin to tell you all the adversity that I had to face to get to a moment that I might no longer have. So when I was told to do an art project expressing how I feel about the situation that I am in, I had no idea where to even start. But then I had an idea. I could combine it with a new hobby that I have picked up during this quarantine I love woodworking now so I decided to cut a slab of wood sand it down and then burn a design into it. The design that I burned into it is a panther paw print on the left side and a graduate with a cap and gown on the right side with the words burned in big that say, “CLASS OF 2020”. Now I like simplicity so I didn’t paint a background I just left the original wood as that. Then I begin to think about what I should do next and at first I was just going to make a collage of me with my friends and family throughout my schooling, but then I couldn’t because I know that I’m not the only one feeling the way that I do. All of the classes graduating this year feel the same whether that be high school graduating classes, college graduating classes, or my graduating class. So what I did instead was I made a collage of words and names. The black writing is all of the names in my graduating class and the words highlighted in neon green paint are anything that related to the coronavirus something that took away things from all of us. And the words in blue paint are things that have peaked through in this global Pandemic that we have all learned to appreciate and never take for granted again. The coronavirus took away things and people from us that we can never get back, but together we stand seemingly more united than ever. And for that, I’ve learned to have hope for humanity because it’s not dead and I think that it just took this deadly disease to show that.