Creative Writing

It Has Been a While Since... PRE-COVID

By Bryce G.

As the time grew nearer and nearer to 8:18 AM, I swung my backpack on my shoulder and strode to the front door. I yelled goodbye to anyone that was listening, and I realized I was in charge of getting my younger sister to the bus with me that morning. I shouted her name and heard, “coming” as she trampled down the stairs. Of course, she took 2 minutes or so to grab her jacket and shoes so I knew the walk to the bus stop would have to be fast. I used the time she took to put on my earbuds to blast absurdly loud music into my ears at 8 AM, this could not have been good for me. We step out the door, and I use my rainbow house key to lock the door. When I turned around I stopped for a moment, realizing just how cold it was. Not cold enough to shiver but cold enough to remain a thought in the back of my head while we waited. I'm glad I was just wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants. Of course, this had nothing to do with how I predicted the weather would be, but just out of laziness. I heard the rumble of the bus, one we could hear from miles away and I glanced to the left to see it come over the gradual hill in the morning fog. As it came to a rolling stop in front of our mailboxes, all the kids on my stop got on, in order. It was odd, we never established an order, it is almost like it was always there. Youngest children to oldest, we boarded into the slight warmth of the bus. The mother of the third-grader on our bus waved him off and we continued down the road. I had approximately six minutes before I had to snap out of my haze and into the chaotic but primarily joyous environment of school.

The Rush

By Tolga Daim

The six o’clock alarm goes off. My house already up and running with the lights all on even though the sun has just started rising. When I walk down, I quickly grab some breakfast, and my mom hands me my lunch for the day, which I shove in my bag along with my water bottle. I sling my heavy bag on my shoulder. Our dad is already in the car telling us to hurry up, and my mom is running around the kitchen cleaning things up so she can go to her work. My sister and I run out the door saying “bye” and “love you” and we quickly put some shoes on and jump in the car. Those were the scenes every morning before this pandemic started. For the past 14 months and counting, that morning rush was never relived, it was replaced by a laid back and relaxed morning. We all wake up at different times and hop on our meets. I wake up at 8:15, and the house is silent, with murmurs of talking from separate rooms. The sprints through the house at six o’clock and the yells to wake up are yet to be seen in the past 14 months. There used to be a constant rush, and there was no stop. And it all stopped. To say that I missed the morning rush would be a lie. Waking up before the sun rose, the birds beginning to chirp, and the toaster beginning to shoot out bread. Throwing on some clothes half awake and going downstairs to meet a fully energetic mother serving you some breakfast and handing your lunch for the day. I was always still sleepy, always slow. I did everything in the morning as slow as possible, and it did drive my parents crazy. I do miss that laughing exchange and commentary of how I’m so slow when both of them (parents) are like rockets and get things done in the morning. Now, there is no commentary, there is no half-awake eating, but there is 9 to 10 hour sleeps. I wake up after the sun rises, and I eat my breakfast without any rush. Do I like that the rush is gone, I genuinely don’t know, am I looking forward to it in 3 months, I don’t know.

Procrastination - during covid

Livia Chiu

Procrastination. If I were to describe my COVID schooling I would use that word. It’s such a simple word, fun to say, but sums up so much on what I did. I sleep, procrastinate, and then pull all-nighters, it’s a vicious cycle I don’t know why I do. I stare at the work and say I’ll do it later. But I never do I always have a general idea of what I want to do for the assignment, I just don’t want to you know, do it. I procrastinate on the little things I don’t enjoy doing in life as well, and it always comes back to hit me in the back. I’ve lost sense of time, all the days mush into one and I find myself taking periodic naps between classes only to wake up and panic about the time. If I were, to sum up, COVID for me, it would be procrastinating my life away and later question why do I do this, I love the class but I lack the drive. And I lay in bed doing work for the rest of the night.

Don't Force It

By Henry Broberg

When planning this final issue of the Riverdale Review, we were prompted to make our pieces for this issue centered around wrapping up the school year and looking forward to next year. In my reflection of the past year spent away from the Riverdale community at large, I thought about the difficulty that I have noticed and experienced first hand when attempting to interact with those members of the student and teacher bodies that I have seen at CDL or elsewhere. Being out of practice with the act of socializing with these people for over a year certainly means that effort is required on both party’s parts in any sort of interaction. Whereas pre-pandemic much of this could have been instinctual, now there is an unnatural element of effort that was previously absent. In my experience, the interactions I have had with others over the past couple of months have felt forced, as if they were being held specifically for the purpose of having had these interactions, and not for the enjoyment of them, and I suppose in many cases this might have been true. Which begs the question, why do we feel the need to have these forced interactions? In my thinking of how to best answer this question, I thought of a recent experience I had in regards to this class. In the past issue of the Riverdale Review, I did not end up publishing any sort of piece or article for the paper. In our preparation for Issue #2, I decided to create a survey (via google form) to be shared with those who attend LIP (at that time a relatively recent addition to our school schedule) asking various questions in regards to student’s experience and opinion about the new format. Answers were to be anonymous, and my publication for the next issue would be a piece sharing my findings in this little survey. The idea in writing this was to get a good idea of the impact LIP has had on its participants, and whether or not it was actually effective. Questions varied from “how often do you attend LIP?” to “how much, if at all, has it impacted your mental health?” and “do you learn anything at LIP?” As one can see, it was crucial, in order for me to write an accurate paper addressing the results, that a wide sample size was received. If limited to no responses were received, the data would be useless as it would be judging a population by a sample. In total, I received 11 responses. We tried to get the survey out there through numerous different platforms, but, as evident, none succeeded. So this begged the question, why aren’t we getting more responses? I think this bears a similar answer to my initial query of “why do we feel the need to forcibly interact?” We feel the need to forcibly interact as it is our idea of “normal.” We, as humans, feel the need to go back to what we are accustomed to, in this case, life before the pandemic. It is against our primal instincts to try new things when we know old ones that work just as well or better, as “why fix what isn’t broken?” However, when the opportunity arose for the survey, people were not under the eye of others, and could therefore do whatever they were most comfortable with, which, due to the lack of sedentary action over the past year, is not participating and remaining in our own bubbles. I encourage all those reading this to challenge themselves to push beyond their comfort zone over the next year to interact with and engage with others, but not unnaturally. Forced connection benefits no one and bears no positive result. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t force ourselves to engage. A forceful engagement leaves the door open to natural interaction, yet does not have to. I hope that we all are able to keep this in mind over the next year.

Covid Sports

by Teddy Altman

When covid hit I wasn’t immediately thinking about my sports career being impacted obviously I was worried for everyone's health instead but as time went on I got more and more sad that sports weren't able to be played. That hit me really hard because that takes up about 75% of my day when I'm not in school. In that time I mostly rewatched a lot of sports highlights to keep busy and trained by myself alot to stay in shape. Then slowly sports began to come back and be integrated and that was so exciting to be able to play sports again even though they were a little different then we were used to. The first time our soccer team was able to get back out on the field and smell the freshly cut grass being gently warmed by the high sun in the sky was the time I felt at home once again. Training with friends and competing safely with other schools made going through a worldwide pandemic an easier task. I think with caution and patience sports will be back to normal at the end of summer and fall sports can be in full effect as school starts up again.

Course reflection

by: Jolynn Tripi

Participating in the Current History Publications class this trimester was tough to manage, but in the end very rewarding. Taking this class taught me time management and the importance of deadlines. Writing article after article is challenging especially if you are also taking multiple writing courses during the trimester already. I think that in future classes it will definitely be easier to put papers out more often because people will have a better understanding and will be more efficient. Being online this year did make taking the class harder. I think that conversing in class and feeling comfortable with the people in your class is important in a course like this. Once we go back to school and are able to have face-to-face conversations with people I think that it will definitely work better.

School Year Reflection

by: Walter DeWitt

This school year has been frantic, to say the least. We came off a term of pass or fail grading straight into something nobody was expecting. Riverdale tried to lessen the load of work for each student by making it less total class time each week, which was helpful for us to adjust to the new way school was. As the year went on they kept making changes trying to make it better for the students and teachers alike, but it was a near-impossible task. We couldn’t go back in person for school and there was nothing that could be done about it. We still had to sit in front of our computers for hours a day doing school work and having to focus. This was much easier in person as we could be much more interactive and the teacher could see what we were doing the whole time. Online it was different because there was no way for the teacher to be able to know what we were doing. It was very boring at times because of how hard it was to be interactive online. So as a way to escape the boredom we could use our phones or play on our computers easily without much consequence. In a way, we had more freedom and in a way, we had less. That was until term 3 came and the rules became a little less strict. We were allowed to go back in person a little bit, but only for a couple hours a day and we couldn’t really learn anything in person because not everybody was there. It would be unfair then, to teach new things to only some of the people in a class and not to everyone else. The class aspect wasn’t the only change that happened. We also had to change how sports worked. The seasons were much shorter than normal making it so we had fewer games and events to play in. The practices and games all required masks which made playing sports a lot harder. We also had different timing for each sport, making them all in the springtime and all of them feel very weird to play. Overall this year really sucked, but now it's almost over and hopefully can go back to normal next year.

Optimism

By Edita Omerovic

If this abnormal year has done anything, it has given us time. Time to think, to improve, and to ponder what's to come. It gave us time to explore new hobbies and practice new beliefs. Our once in a blue moon activities have become everyday things, giving us the opportunity to master them. Our home has become a ten in one, an office, a bedroom, a gym, an art studio, and a chef's kitchen. Saving us hundreds in gas money. Looking forward, we can take the things we have learned, the things we have perfected, into the future with us. We can take the stories of quarantine with us to the future generations.

Looking at the positives in times like this has become a little difficult, especially since all anyone can focus on is the things that we have lost. But we need to look at the things we have gained, no matter how small they are. You never know how the things you have learned now can help you in the future where we go back to normal. Who knows you might even miss all of the structured alone time that you got over this past year and a half. Optimism can be one of the greatest tools one can have, and Covid-19 might have been the one to have taught us that.

Edita Omerovic