Although this year has been unlike any other, seniors have been making the most out of their last weeks on campus — including, it seems, their last trips across campus. Recently, it has become more and more common to see seniors zipping around the School on scooters.
Scooters aren’t only a fun way people can connect on campus — they are also a practical method of cross-campus travel. Bradley Wang ’21, one of Choate’s scooter jockeys, said of his ride’s practicality, “It wasn’t until this year that I started riding it a lot more to get to places faster.”
The Class of 2021 didn’t exactly create the scooter trend at Choate. Many seniors remember their peers in the grades above them riding scooters. Wang said, “My sophomore year prefect had a scooter and gave it to me after he graduated, so I have had it since junior year and been riding it around.”
But scooters aren’t only practical — “scootering” has also become a popular activity for seniors who are looking to have fun during the their final term on campus. The prospect of fun is why Pau Alvarado ’21 roped her friend group into getting scooters. She said, “I started convincing all of my friends to buy scooters so that we could go scootering all together.” As more and more of her friends began to scooter, the group began having, as she put it, “weekly scootering adventures.”
On the other hand, there are seniors who caught onto the scooter memo much earlier in their Choate career. Mohammad Khokha ’21 started scootering nearly four years ago. “I started scootering during freshman year, because I thought it would be very efficient getting to and from the SAC,” he said. His plan didn’t go perfectly, as “it turned out that going up the hill was horrible, so I stopped after freshman fall.” Khokha decided to bring his scooter back during his last term at Choate for the sake of “nostalgia.”
Perhaps the most humorous part of this scooter phenomenon is the fact that many of the scooters don’t quite fit the size or age of their riders. Alvarado said, “The funny thing is that most of our scooters are child scooters.” In fact, she admitted that the scooters she and her friends own “are not recommended for people over the age of 12.”
Not only have seniors been able to ride around on scooters to spend time with friends, but they’ve also upheld most senior traditions even in the time of Covid-19, as they’re eager to take any opportunity to spend lost time together as a class. During the winter term, seniors were able to go sledding. Now, in their senior spring, the annual Senior Assassin game was revived, and Last Hurrah and Garden Party proposals have abounded as Covid-safe versions of the events draw near.
Lulu Louchheim ’21 said, “With such a weird year, we all appreciate the chances that we get to come together as a class more than we would appreciate them in a normal year.”
