Seniors have graduated, a sign of summer fast approaching. 

The now-graduated seniors left their mark on the school and on the students—some seniors more than others, such as seniors with junior partners. 

These juniors have been abandoned and left to survive high school on their own. They now must walk the hallways without that senior by their side. One such junior is Ammon Mehney who is more commonly known as Mickey. 

Mickey is used to taking a long route to class with his girlfriend senior Rylie Scobey, but now, Rylie has graduated and is no longer walking the halls of FHC. 

Mickey would go out of his way to spend more time with Rylie and would get to class right on time.

“Walking between classes feels kind of foreign,” Mickey said. “[Now I] just [head] straight to class.” 

Not seeing Rylie in the hallways not only affects Mickey’s arrival time to class, but it also affects how often he gets to see Rylie outside of school. While Rylie is blessed with more free time, Mickey is stuck in class and preparing for upcoming exams. 

“[There is a] lack of seeing her and hanging out,” Mickey said. “With exams coming up and all, that just adds to the fact that I can’t see her as much, and texting and calling hasn’t been so good. I have to study a lot more. She has a lot of free time, but all of her stuff is after school hours, like picking up her sister.” 

Mickey and Rylie have increasingly little time during the week to hang out, so spending time together over the weekend has become crucial. They are not the only senior-junior couple going through this struggle. Junior Lucy Wu and her now-graduated boyfriend senior Daniel Wang also have limited time and are in a shift of their relationship. 

“I mean, it’s a good thing FaceTime exists; I love that for us,” Lucy said. “It’s just a trying time. It’s obviously hard once you’re apart. We’ll try and spend as much time as we can together and FaceTime a lot once the next school year rolls around. I’m not saying it won’t be hard. It probably will be. Yeah, it’ll be fine.”

Lucy is still stuck in school and going to class, but she is missing Daniel. Their relationship of a year and a half is still going strong, but it’s different now that they are in different life stages.

“I thought it was nice [that we went to school together] because we experienced a lot of the same things, especially since we [had] classes together,” Lucy said. “Also, it was just nice because then you can just tell him details about your day. It’s harder now when we don’t see each other as often because I don’t know what he’s doing all the time. It’s just different. I mean, obviously, we still know things, but I pick and choose what to share since it’s not as easy [as when we both had classes]. I don’t want it to be an information overload kind of thing. I don’t want to give him a breakdown of every detail every single day.”

 Junior Ayla Ahmetovic and her boyfriend senior Thomas Carano are also going through a shift in their relationship as Thomas gets ready to go to college. 

 “It’s really hard [to make time to see each other] because I work a lot, and he works a lot too,” Ayla said. “Sometimes we try to go get ice cream late at night, or we’ll just try to do things like after I work or before, but it’s always short, last-minute plans; whereas before it used to be longer periods of time that we were hanging out together.” 

Even though they don’t have as much time together, Ayla still cherishes any time they get. Both Ayla and Thomas try to spend as much time together as they can before Thomas goes off to college. 

“I’d say that the time that we have together is really important,” Ayla said. “Because even though he hasn’t gone to college yet, it’s still like we’re preparing to strengthen our relationship before he goes to college, and so I’d say all the time that we can get together is really beneficial.” 

Time spent together is important in all relationships, especially when it is going to change to long distance. Ayla knows long distance is hard, but she and Thomas are prepared to try and are spending time together to prepare for it. 

Ayla has two pieces of advice for couples going through the same situation she is: spend as much time together as you can, and don’t let anyone else dictate your relationship. 

“Definitely don’t listen to what other people have to say about your relationship,” Ayla said. “Because I feel like a lot of relationships are different, and when you start to listen to other people talking about your relationship, it can affect the way that you think about it. Also, don’t make [your relationship completely] private, but try to not make it so public so that everyone has an opinion on it.”