Pandemic Life Presents Opportunity to Embrace Change

by Pallavi Datta

It’s almost unbelievable now to think about how at the start of 2020 the headlines were about the bushfires ravaging Australia, the impeachment trials, tensions with Iran, the Hong Kong protests, and the crowded race to declare the Democrat nominee. Today, coronavirus’ omnipresence is overwhelming. In the backdrop of a pandemic, California faces its own devastating wildfires, the President has been hospitalized for Covid-19, Black Lives Matter protesters have taken to the streets all across the country in the biggest fight for racial justice since the civil rights movement, and we are less than thirty days away from what is quite possibly the most high stakes election in recent history. Not even a year after the first Covid-19 case was recorded, thirty-five million people have contracted the virus and one million people have died worldwide.

Looking back, I feel so many mixed emotions when I recall the first time I read about a mysterious respiratory illness in Wuhan from a Washington Post article, or a time when I hadn’t heard of Zoom, or was joking about toilet-paper hoarders. I never believed in Friday the thirteenth, but I also never expected that an ordinary March day would end my freshman year and divide my life into a clearly cut “before” and “after”. Living through the tumultuous, near-dystopian times that followed, with our lives disrupted and our sense of time warped, it was and is still easy to forget to be grateful that we are safely sheltered while frontline workers continue to risk their lives.

As school went online, it was disjointed, confusing, and disorganized. Teachers, even with their best intent, struggled to adapt to online teaching, course syllabuses were left unfinished, students struggled to keep track of their assignments across multiple platforms and compartmentalize with no defined schedule and lack of formal routine. An overwhelming sense of “when will this be over?” dominated. As summer approached, it soon became clear: it wouldn’t.

Realizing that and grappling with it was hard for me, as I’m sure it was for many of us. Moving on from an unfinished academic year without any sense of closure was difficult, but it was the only way forward. Instead of stagnating, I had to both accept the changes in my life and try to find a way to make it meaningful. Changing my mindset helped me realize that as much as I could view this as an obstacle, it could also be an opportunity. Although many of our summer plans were derailed, we got free time to explore our interests and work toward our personal goals. While many of us couldn’t visit friends and family in person, technology allowed us to connect with them virtually. While a normal end to a high school year comes with losing sleep and constant stress over homework and tests, we were able to use that time to reflect and relax.

Although it has only been a few weeks since school started, it is clearly so much more organized than March. The summer has allowed teachers to prepare and adapt their lessons to a virtual setting, students have had the time to reset and regaining a sense of normalcy has been beneficial. Although hybrid and remote learning cannot substitute for fully in person classes, it has had other benefits. The flexibility of learning from home and the later start time have been things that most students have appreciated so far. For sure, virtual learning has its difficulties, and with the shortened blocks, nearly forty hours of class time have been lost. I never thought I’d get nostalgic over the thought of the whole school packing into the gym for the pep rally, or miss the sound of slamming lockers and the feel of crowded hallways, but with limited time to socialize it’s hard to feel that same sense of community. But this year, we all have to adapt, and this experience has been a good reminder that we must remain flexible in an ever changing world.

Overall, the reopening effort has been a success and it has all been possible thanks to our custodians who work tirelessly to keep us safe, teachers who have adapted their curriculum virtually and the administration for organizing to make everything possible. As high schoolers going through what are perhaps the four most formative years of our lives, it is stressful knowing we are missing out on so many important high school experiences and not knowing how the college admissions process will change with the pandemic. When asked to reflect on how we felt and what we did during these past six months, as we are being asked now and will be asked our whole lives, it is hard to know where to start. Divisive yet unifying, it has been a year of superlatives juxtaposed. We are literally witnessing the pages of future history books being written. And it’s a lot to process. These shared experiences are our defining moments, but it is too soon to make sense of it. All we can do is find the little silver linings through it all.