A look back to pre-pandemic life

It’s March 13th, 2020. The annual Pi Day celebration has been rescheduled to today due to March 14th being on a Saturday. It’s as normal as it gets around Galileo High; or at least that’s what we thought. When the news first broke, as Madison Laughorn recounts it, “I was sitting in class and all of a sudden Chad said '‘the governor just canceled school for two weeks.’' I didn’t believe him, but sure enough, ten seconds later Mr. Wright came over the intercom saying the same thing.” And so it began; the quarantine that would last a little longer than the two weeks that was originally projected.

The wave of emotion was still thick as we all filed out into the side parking lot to watch our peers and teachers get pied. Through the murmurs of restlessness from over 300 students, a general consensus was held; something about this “2-week vacation” was bittersweet. “I was happy yet sad all at once. Two weeks seemed a little long, especially since I had been close to a few people then.”, Rachel Martin said, and she was quite right because about halfway through that second week, the Q-Bomb was dropped on our heads for the first time. Not only were we getting out of school for the rest of the year, but the world was on a mandatory lockdown due to the coronavirus.

The initial reaction to that news was much stronger. Shelby Brady said, “The rest of my junior (and senior) year had been taken away from me and I knew nothing would be the same since.” Many of our lives were thrown into disarray, whether socially, mentally, or in some somber cases, literally. There was an initial attempt at virtual learning in those first months, one that puddered to the finish line of the school year’s end. These were the hardest months to bear, a foreshadowing of what was to come.

Since those first months, the world we once thought we knew has changed significantly. From the murder of George Floyd and ensuing riots, to the simmering election that came to a boil in Janurary of 2021, and all the funny tiktoks in between to lighten our moods, all of us have grown in some way or fashion. A year later, as we settle into this new normal we’ve been forced to adopt, it is with confidence that I say that, for better or worse, COVID-19 has certainly made the world interesting. We’ve made it through the tutorial year, faced down super spreaders, extreme boredom, and even the evil that is virtual learning. We will forever be a part of history; our chapter will be 200 pages long. The question is, will you be history, or make it?