Day 730

Two years ago— March 13, 2020— was the first day of the pandemic in the United States, and, for the bubble in which I live, today may be one of the last. Life proceeds as usual, only wearing masks, and the plane rides and dances and concerts that I ached for a year ago are possible once again. The evening news episodes I watch at home have gone from “Covid spike, depressing effects of the pandemic, natural disaster, mass shooting, smiling child starts a charity” to coverage of events farther afield, and the first wave of studies regarding the pandemic’s effects on education have been released. In science and in our lives, COVID-19 is finally moving squarely into the past.

Coming into March, we’ve moved past the winter’s ultra-contagious, mild Omicron variant. At the beginning of the semester, each of my classes were missing a few people who sat sadly on Zoom as masked faces stared at them from the classroom, and a lot of us feared the cohortification of our lives once again. I’d say that about 1 in 7 people I know had been infected by the time mid-February rolled around. But, for the vaccinated, the virus is no longer a threat. The group trips that were a tradition at my school did happen— I spent a joyous week hiking in Arizona and laying to rest my beef with nature. Getting to climb red rocks and be reminded that life contains possibilities outside of a daily routine and that we have knowledge outside of what’s required for classes was exactly what a lot of us needed.

Now, I’m sitting outside on a beautiful spring day and feeling hopeful. It feels like, for the vaccinated, Omicron was the death throes of a virus becoming less and less incapacitating to us. (For the unvaccinated, the pandemic continues and is deadly; news coverage has just moved on.) Yesterday, after my county announced the end of its mask mandate, my school swiftly followed. In the coming weeks, the junior boys who refuse to pull their masks over their noses will go bare-faced everywhere. Our faces will debut in classrooms once again, for the first time in two years, and we’ll smile at each other in the hallways instead of just squinting our eyes. As of now, the CDC no longer recommends that vaccinated people wear masks, and I’m excited to take mine off, but only after the danger of passing the virus to vulnerable people has passed. Wearing a mask is still a common courtesy for most of us, one that I expect to end gradually throughout the next few months, as cases drop further.

Meeting people in-person again has been wonderful, but the pandemic has left its mark on the way we interact with others. One of my classes recently evolved into a venting/impromptu group therapy session. There, I learned that the junior for whom I’m supposed to be responsible, a sparkling force of personality, has been dissed by some people who don’t know her because of her erratic Facebook presence. The point of adolescence is to experimentally discover yourself, but the value of those risks is lost when social media keeps a record of all of your misguided attempts. The phrase “parasocial relationship” is normally applied to internet celebrities, but this pandemic has allowed us to develop parasocial relationships with our own peers. Coming out at the end of it, I find myself somewhat repulsed by mindless consumption online (as boomer-humor as that sounds), waking up some mornings avoiding my phone and what it might turn me into. As little self-control as I have, my new rule is to use social media as a tool to do things not on social media, whether that’s meeting up with friends or reading a new book. Or anything related to Wordle, my favorite triviality to come out of the final pandemic era.

Alongside our attempts to gain back lost social skills, young people are also feeling the repercussions of a year of altered learning. I hear from friends and my brother that the public high schools in my county, which taught only virtually last year, are struggling to make up for this. “They just gave up with online school” is what I’ve heard about some home high school peers, and I know younger kids who couldn’t learn to read over Zoom and are now trying to catch up. Being back in the classroom is amazing, and I haven’t had to claw my way to motivation like last year, but senioritis still strikes me occasionally. When I was a sophomore at the beginning of the pandemic, my schoolwork felt like an annoying daily chore, and going to some classes sometimes feels like that again. The root of this feeling is different, though; I’ve discovered the endeavors to which I want to dedicate my time. These pastimes— reading, writing, computer stuff, erratic art, and spending time with the people I love— are valuable and educational even without structure (I could argue that the lack of structure is what draws me in), and it would have been harder for me to discover them without being stuck at home for a year. And witnessing science denial, community spread, widening economic inequality, and online politicization is at least motivating many people I know to want to learn how to prevent another pandemic from multiple angles. For those like me, who had the privilege of growth during the pandemic, we’re moving into college feeling more capable of schooling ourselves, but pandemic lag will have long-lasting ripples for younger students or those whose experiences were less comfortable.

I think the only solution to the complicated nature of pandemic losses will be finding a more compassionate timeline on which to define success. As a start, we need to recognize the repercussions of the pandemic as a societal problem— a problem which will take both individual and societal steps to remedy. Right now, a lot of individuals are blamed for “failing” under a system that has made success harder and harder (arguments about excessive workload being met with suggestions for time management strategies come to mind). But institutional methods, like more understanding late work policies or giving students time off, can only help us readjust. Personally, the success treadmill is a mindset that I’ve been fighting off with a stick this past year. Our lives as they are sit in a precarious position, and we all need to remember whatever values we discovered while isolated as our routines overflow once again.

After trying and failing at this post, I didn’t think I’d come back here. The trouble with writing is that it requires that I continue to believe that I have something valuable to say, that I’m taking up this space in your day and in your mind for a reason. Who cares about some random seventeen-year-old white girl from North Carolina, right? It’s a time of year when crises of self are all too common. To quote one of my favorite artists, for high school seniors, the future is a benevolent black hole. Though we’re not sure what city we’ll move to next fall, what people we’ll take with us, or how our environment will change us, we can be vaguely excited. I can only hope that my words, and myself imbued into them, have had the communicative value (here and elsewhere) that I want, and as we near the end of our pandemic journey, so too does this blog.

I’ve changed my title today because, for the most part, physical isolation isn’t an issue anymore. My friends from home host parties for the vaccinated. I’ve picked out my prom dress and stood in concert crowds like a particle in viscous liquid, and my Instagram is filled with people I love. In the past two years, teenagers have endured what will hopefully be the biggest historical event of our lives, and we’re still here. The complications of social and educational isolation will take longer to deal with, but now that regular human interaction is once again the norm, we can counter them as they are meant to be countered— together.

XOXO, Quaranteen