Online school and the period of lockdown were the only good things to come out of COVID-19. Well, that and the ability to stream blockbuster movies on Disney+. Contrary to almost everyone I have spoken to, I loved online school. I had the ability to learn from the comfort of my own home and in my sweatpants. As a very introverted person, online school took the hard part out of school (except for math, that’s always hard). Online learning meant that I didn’t really have to talk to anyone, or wear real clothes, or go to the cafeteria; it was just pure comfort. Not to mention, I actually had time to do the things I enjoyed. I no longer spent over an hour driving to and from school each day. I started a garden, I went on long runs in my neighborhood, and I even tried baking (which I can admit was a mistake on my part). All in all, the idea of going online isn’t that big of a deal for me, so I’m a little biased while writing this article.
I think that we should go online, not just because I want to, but because everyone around me is getting COVID-19. Almost all of my friends and family either had, currently have, or were exposed to COVID-19 in the last couple of weeks. I want to do whatever I can to stop this virus. I’ve accepted that my highschool experience isn’t all that it could have been because of COVID-19, which is fine in my case, as I wasn’t really planning on doing the things that COVID-19 prohibited anyway. But I think I can speak for all seniors when I say that we’ve been looking forward to a normal college experience. College is supposed to be a clean slate, filled with meeting new people and trying new things. How are we supposed to do that if almost everything is prohibited because of COVID-19 rules? Or, even worse, if our freshman year of college is online? College is a time for new experiences, and I’m not really looking forward to repeating the last two years.
But then again, I’m not a doctor, or anyone who is knowledgeable enough about COVID-19 to know exactly what the right thing to do is. I’m just a kid (or young adult, or whatever category I fall into now) who has lost two years worth of random highschool activities, summer internships, and a loved one over the course of this pandemic, and I desperately want things to change.
In the beginning of the year, we were hopeful that public panic would subside, masks would be torn off, and life would return to normal. But I barely even remember normal. When things were “normal,” I was a 15-year-old sophomore who just got her braces off. Now, I’m graduating in five months and can’t think of anything besides “When is this pandemic going to end?” If it takes a couple of months of remote learning for this pandemic to end, I’m okay with that. Cancel prom, send me my diploma via Google Docs. That’s fine. I’m not one to complain about cancelling things, though I am one to complain about everything else. I just think that if going online is the best way to stop this pandemic, then that’s what we should do (along with getting vaccinated!). We should all do everything we can to end this and try to move on, not only for ourselves, but for all the people that we have lost throughout these last two years.
