Senior ditch day was planned for on a Friday in late April, where all Galileo seniors were invited to meet at Ocean Beach to hang out, enjoy a bond fire and eat some snacks that the organizers would provide. My expectations were high, as I envisioned seeing a lot of seniors having fun, playing volleyball or jumping around in the water, but after sitting around for 2 hours, I found it to be disappointing & kind of boring. My expectations were nowhere near reality, as only a few students ended up going, most of whom I didn’t know, and all they did was sit around on blankets.
Getting to Ocean Beach later than expected, I was feeling like I missed out on a large amount of activities happening while I was rushing to get there, but as soon as I got out of the car, I wanted to go back in. The major issue was the wind, which ruined the day, as gusts of wind were blowing the blankets away and blowing sand into everyone’s eyes.
After enduring 2 hours on the beach and doing nothing but constantly complaining, we decided to look around for a better place to hang out. We ended up going to Golden Gate Park, which had a giant windmill that would block the wind for us. While we were there we found another friend of ours, alongside of him were other students sitting on the wet grass, hanging out. Right next to us though were loud tourists who were staring at us, making us feel out of place and wanting to leave once again.
.Since there was no set spot we wanted to hang out at, we decided to walk around in hopes of finding more people we knew. Walking around gave us an opportunity to see the rest of the seniors. Coming to the skip day I thought I would see everyone together as a big group. But everybody was doing their own thing in small groups around the park instead. I saw clusters of people huddled together talking, others riding their bikes along the sidewalk.
As the time was going by more of us wanted to see if other people had shown up at the beach so as we walked back with a larger group of people. We came across more Galileo seniors and they followed us in our walk. Shortly after we made it to where all the cars parked, a group of them separated from us to join others.
I used the group splitting up as a cue for me to leave. I was annoyed at the wind and found the whole event boring. It would have been more interesting to participate in some kind of activity with my friends rather than walk around talking to people.
Waking up early to go all the way to Ocean Beach felt like a waste of time. I feel like I would’ve spent my time better staying home or going to school. My thoughts on why it wasn’t coordinated as it should have been is because it was not associated with ASB and students did not want to get in trouble. The story posted on Instagram was also unclear on where exactly to meet, which is why the seniors were all spread out. If this annual event was set at a later time more students would have gone. Ocean Beach was too far for a lot of the people who don’t like waking up early, especially if it’s around the same time school starts.
