Freshman year

As the Class of 2025, we began our high school journey fresh out of quarantine, wearing masks and social distancing out of memory.

While the rest of our upperclassmen peers knew the campus like the back of their hands, we were adjusting to a new school and recovering from a year confined in our homes. This was also the lucky year when every student got their own Chromebook. Not only was this new to us, but it was new to the whole school.

That year, the district distributed close to 32,000 electronic devices throughout the district. Not only were we introduced to our own personal devices for school, but a new platform, Schoology, was thrust upon us.

Just a refresher, Schoology was the super confusing program that our district decided was advanced enough to cater to all our academic needs. One can only ask, what made the district choose Schoology above all else?

If it wasn’t the difficult assignment submission routine or the horrific process of trying to check your grade in each class, then we don’t know what it was.

Amongst all the other new experiences we were enjoying, we also were introduced to our very first lockdown.

For those who don’t remember, we were dismissed from lunch early and sent to our sixth-period classes, where we remained for the rest of the school day. We couldn’t have known then, but that experience was going to set us up for the numerous lockdowns we would go through for the rest of our high school careers.

In the second semester, while new variants of COVID were sprouting up all over the place, the school made mask mandates optional, and we were exposed to our peers’ faces for the first time.
On another note, let’s not forget the infamous trash can fire that sent us all to the field during fifth period.

Later that spring, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced his bill that would mandate state public schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. In compliance with this law, Cal converted A period into B period and got rid of our beloved Wednesday late starts.

Of course, as luck had it, late starts were ripped from our precious hands just as they were given to us.

Beautiful way to end our freshman year, losing the little privileges we had right before the next three years of high school.

Sophomore year

This year was interesting. Demetrius Ball was introduced to us as our new principal, and we would soon find out that he was going to be making some changes at Cal.

Although it didn’t last that long, we have to remember the god awful scanning systems. Does that ring a bell? Having to scan our ID cards or enter our ID numbers into the system for attendance every time we walked into a classroom?

That was the closest Cal has come to embodying a “Black Mirror” episode.

This was also the first year we were introduced to ChatGPT.

Can you imagine? It’s a mystery how anyone was ever able to do any work without it.

To continue our yearly tradition, Cal experienced another lockdown.

Because they all sort of blur together after a while, we’re talking about the lockdown where we all heard about a man on the roof of the main building.

The school received a bomb threat, so we entered a lockdown during the fifth period.

Someone snapped a picture of a man on the main building roof, and soon enough, the picture was spreading like wildfire. And with the way rumors work, it started going around that the man on the roof was the bomber.

This was all false, of course, and it was later cleared up that the man was a district maintenance worker just doing his job.

Later in the spring, Cal brought back its ColorFest event after five years, and boy, what a clusterfest that was.

Leadership hired famous Bay Area rappers SOB and Shoreline Mafia to perform at the event. The rappers were dismissed from campus last minute, however, due to violating their contract by allegedly being under the influence on campus.

Students who had paid for VIP tickets to meet the rappers and get autographs did not get to do so.

Despite all these colorful events, we still managed to end the year strong before we entered the world of responsibilities that came with being upperclassmen.

Junior year

This is the year when we all locked in.

We realized that we would be applying to colleges soon and could no longer procrastinate, so we began to cram everything imaginable into our schedules.

We signed up for all the APs and honors classes, we signed up for internships, we signed up to volunteer, and we signed up for any other opportunities we could think of.

With a packed schedule, how did we manage to complete everything? Of course, now with the creation of AI, it’s the number one thing students turn to when help is needed.

We also started this year with a new feature as the district decided to add fences and gates.

Everywhere!

This, of course, was the result of the scary incident that happened during our sophomore year, when some Dublin High School students came onto campus and decided to beat up a student in a classroom.

Everyone was shaken up because of this incident, and with the collaboration of our administration team and parents, it was agreed that we needed more security around campus.

Later in October, we published the story under the headline, “Parade marches on despite racist graffiti”. This shocked everyone.

Starting the year with three homecoming class floats being vandalized with racist graffiti was not part of our agenda.

Just as students started forgetting about the vandalism issue, a violent fight in the bathroom made the headline in November, this time highlighting the major concerns of bystander mentality.

Then in January the school’s new automated detention system began, and boy, did that cause some issues.

Just when we thought we were done with the dumb scanning attendance system, out comes the automated detention system.

We might not have always kept up with the changes at Cal, but we can say that technology and Cal don’t mix well.

The automated detention system was to keep students from being late to class and skipping classes, but honestly, knowing teenagers, no one cared about this rule anymore, and detention numbers began to spike.

Just a month later, “Detentions increase ninefold with new system” was published as our headline story, and let’s be real, we weren’t surprised.

Oh well, despite all that happened, we have ended our “most important year of high school” and now, we’re moving on to the year where we see if what we did for the past three years was beneficial at all.

Senior year

We all promised ourselves that we’re going to start our college applications during the summer, but let’s be honest. How many of us actually started in the summer?

Everyone unleashed their inner author this year, including every accomplishment we’ve achieved during our lifetime, because it all leads to this point, right?

We highlighted every little detail in our life because god forbid we leave out a little detail. Who knows? That might cost us the next four years of our lives.

We consulted counselors, teachers, peers, and previous senior friends for their advice. We reviewed multiple versions of our essays for the most perfect one before sending them to our most yearned colleges.

Despite the amount of stress the application process was, no one really prepared us for the stress of awaiting these college decisions.

I envy those who were able to apply early action because our beloved University of California and California State University schools don’t have early action, so you’re stuck, suffering from November to March.

During the college application process, some exciting things happened. Remember the Iron Horse Trail that the city shared with us years ago?

Well, good news! It’s finally complete!

The new bleachers that almost ruined last year’s graduation?

Those also were finally finished, and we get to use them for our graduation! (Sorry, not sorry, class of ‘24).

With good news also comes bad news, and last October was filled with some pretty interesting stuff.

First off, we said goodbye to Schoology because just as students and teachers finally got used to that, we switched back to Google Classroom. Yay!

Why, you may ask? Because our contract with Schoology didn’t offer the services that we needed, so we decided, hey, let’s give our students a little flashback to quarantine.

Speaking of quarantine, we also greeted this year with additional gates, meaning our school is officially a closed campus now.

Homecoming was another hot topic this year. Last year it was because of the vandalism to the floats. This year it was because of the physical assault of an assistant principal that happened during the dance. Cal made the local news (again), and this story spread almost like wildfire.

Back in January, we discovered that our district approved more than $26 million in budget cuts, which heavily impacted teachers and staff across the district.
The issue is still ongoing, so hopefully the district and teachers will hash things out soon.

It seems like that’s it from us, although there were some heavy ups and downs on our road, we still can’t believe we’re graduating.

While senior pranks are not tolerated by Cal, we still hope to see a mariachi band follow Principal Ball around campus someday as some students discussed.

Thank you to everyone who stuck with us along the way, and we’re happy to say, Class of 2025, signing out!