When news began circulating about a virus spreading rapidly throughout China, none of us could have predicted what it would cause this year to evolve into. So many lives have been destroyed by the pandemic, it is easy to only see the negative. I assume most of the articles you will read are going to talk about the struggle of seniors, or athletes (Heck, even I could write in length about what the shutdown has done to theatre), but I won’t write about any of that. Not because it’s not important, but because it’s already been said. I could easily write about how I feel that many teachers have given up on education, or how bad the district’s communication is, but I don’t feel as if I need to. Insted, I want to write about the good that has come out of this. Sometimes it appears as if the negatives outway the positives, but in reality the negatives are just louder.

Sence quarantine, I have noticed a dramatic increase in my social interactions for recreational activities. My friends and I talk together FAR more than we talked in school. My family and I play games together through zoom. I’m going for (distanced/masked) walks with my best friend multiple times a week. Before quarantine, I would have done almost NONE of these things. Obviously, the situation poses some unique negatives in my personal life as well. Because my parents are separated, I had to make the difficult decision to stay with one parent for the duration, losing physical contact with the other for months. Luckily, the key word was PHYSICAL. My father and I still talk frequently, and we visit each other from a distance.

School has posed the most negatives for me personally. As a senior, this has been extremely difficult. It doesn’t take much searching, however, to find the positives. I live with (an occasionally unnecessary amount) of ADHD. I expected this to mean disaster for my education. Surprisingly, I found the opposite to be true. The lack of structure forced me to learn to cope and build my own structure. In a time where it feels like my classes have given up on actually educating, I have been given an opportunity to learn time management. A skill arguably much more important than random pieces of WWI trivia. 

Moving on will be unknown territory for all of us. It’s silly to think everything will be the same after and that can be scary. Lucky for us, change is great. Many of us learned skills over this time that will last a lifetime. We may have learned to cook, or knit, or separate ourselves from a petty argument with parents because we have to spend all day with them and it’s just best to keep it civil, or paint. Sure things will be different, but whole families use to share toothbrushes. Thanks to a pandemic, we don’t do that anymore. Maybe after this we don’t use as much paper money, or stand so close in stores. Maybe people will FINALLY start washing their hands after they use the bathroom. Change is great, and personally, I’m very excited to see what happens next.