Day 120 of Isolation

So, it's been 120 days. Four months have passed since I've attended in-person school, left my neighborhood without a mask, or hugged a friend. I write to you from what would, in a parallel universe, be the sweet spot of summer, the mid-July moment when your days are filled with smiles and the back-to-school advertisers haven't yet grasped their greasy hands on the gentle possibility of the next few weeks of rest. Now, though, we make our fun in different ways, through Zoom calls and handmade letters and baked goods. Our homes, familiar yet mundane, are the tranquil eyes in the midst of a hurricane of unmasked neighbors, wacky headlines, and nebulously existent fall semesters. (Hamilton dropped on Disney+, if that previous sentence was any indication. You should go watch it.) High schools and colleges are announcing plans for returning, giving some sense of a future and some hope that this whole thing might be over soon.

News-wise, these last two weeks have been a whole new level of bizarre. First of all, Kanye West, rapper and spouse of Kim Kardashian, is throwing his hat in the ring to be the commander-in-chief of the United States. In the first 24 hours since the announcement, I watched quite a few white boys publicly announce that they were considering voting for West, but the hype has luckily died down since the man has filed no actual presidential paperwork and has some pretty dodgy beliefs. Then, the current president (yuck) was spotted wearing a face mask (the fact that this tidbit was newsworthy should clue future generations in on how surreal this experience is). The wildly popular, more-addictive-than-heroin, algorithmically-prejudiced-against-ugly-people app Tiktok might be banned from the whole US, partially because of data mining concerns but also because ol' DJT thinks K-pop stans are, in fact, traitors to the country and secret operatives for Korea. Looking to November, mail-in ballots and virtual canvassing could increase voter turnout (REGISTER TO VOTE!!), so millions hold out hope for a change in leadership that could properly manage this pandemic.

The local public high school system, which I used to attend, just announced its finalized plan to leave high-schoolers online for the complete first semester, while elementary- and middle-school kids are spread throughout our buildings. I'm sure many US public schools are either in the same predicament or attempting some half-and-half deal. Since my school is a special case (which I'll talk about later), I solicited quotes from some friends on the topic of feelings about the upcoming school year:

"I 100% get it, but I'm sad," stated my friend Cormac, an incoming junior. The Class of 2021 also expressed concerns: "It makes sense, but they should let the seniors go back to school for a week at the end of the year because it's our last year of government-mandated schooling," said my friend Elena. (Here's hoping everyone is back to normal for the second semester.) Ava, another awesome senior, found some pros to the situation, speculating that she'd have "more time to work, work on college applications, and visit [her] boyfriend in college" despite missing out on seeing friends and senior days. To someone who isn't sixteen or seventeen, this sadness might sound overblown, but whether the fun events of senior year are ever (even in a non-pandemic situation) as awesome as they're cracked up to be, there's a real sense of loss here. I've wondered if this pandemic is going to be our generation's equivalent of a World War - some defining event that permanently alters our outlooks and psyches. High school students are certainly feeling the pressure - my friend Eva (pronounced Ava, so read it in your head accordingly), after a sarcastic remark that would have sent a high school guidance counselor into a deep panic, said, "The idea of facing junior year, one that is ever hyped for its difficulty, on Zoom stresses me out just thinking about it." Most ordinary high school students have accepted the necessity of distance learning, but the realization that we each have little personal power to stop the anti-maskers messing up our state's numbers is understandably rough to deal with.

Stemming from the acceptance of distance learning, I bring you another story of intrigue from the pure experience that is my school's parent Facebook page. When my school announced its low-density plan, most of us were sad but knew it would be stupid to open as normal with the way the numbers are going in our state. However, one dad posted a long rant about how, because he hadn't raised his child to live in fear and hadn't read any statistics other than the 0.01% mortality rate, that we should be going back full-density. The comments were filled with students and smart parents supporting the school's decision, but the replies from parents were a bloodbath - I saw a grown woman, a woman whose profile banner proudly declared that she was an anti-masker, childishly attacking 17-year-olds making coherent, thoughtful points. Drama-filled as that debacle was, I was happy to see that so many people who I'll be attending school with are smart people with common sense, as I'd hoped.

If you're anything like me, both your mental and social skills have atrophied, at least slightly, after four months of routine, phone addiction, and boredom. To combat this, I recommend online classes, the kind where you actually meet new people, be that as it may on tiny Zoom screens. I'm in the middle of a two-week short course (from my school) about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and though the work is sometimes headachingly difficult (despite being constantly on my computer, I know not and care not how the thing actually works and am not very tech-savvy), the high I get from meeting new people my age and having something to talk about and work together on is completely unmatched. For the first time in my life, I'm making virtual friends (an odd experience, especially when I want to hug them and realize that we're 200 miles apart), and pretty much every night the past week I've been too happy to fall asleep after video chatting, both school-sanctioned and recreational. Maybe I actually am an extrovert (or maybe I was just elated to meet a cute guy my age). Either way, for me personally, the summer is looking up.

Living through a pandemic is (hopefully) a once-in-a-lifetime event, so as we start to conceive of how the end of isolation may be near (if some of y'all stop! hanging! out! with! people!), as corny as it sounds, I hope we are kinder. As more and more people overshare online (me included) maybe we'll at least learn how to empathize more with those we used to judge. In conclusion: make some art, hang out with your friends socially-distanced or virtually, and learn something new. Remember what you used to take for granted - hugs, or parties, or thrift shopping - and use the images as motivation to wear a mask, vote, and get this country back on track. We can do this.

XOXO, Quaranteen