As we all are painfully aware, Covid-19 has interrupted pretty much every aspect of normal life. With the news of closures of schools K-12 through May 1st coming in, we have to be prepared to hunker down for the long haul. These past few weeks have been some of the longest (and strangest) weeks of my life.  It isn’t fair to compare our current situation to any situation that involves human suffering in human history? In fact, I wouldn’t describe staying home and watching Netflix as suffering at all. I do find it curious, however, how much this disruption is affecting the mental states of my peers and I. 

Human beings crave closeness, and as we are forced to separate ourselves from others we long for a return to normalcy. A return to the norm that we had taken for granted our entire lives. Growing up amidst the internet revolution, as a generation we should be more prepared for implementations such as these than any other group of people in human history, so why are we having such a hard time? I have talked with dozens of my peers about this and they have all reached a similar consensus: “This is driving us insane and we want it all to be over.” 

 If there is a lesson that we may pull from the Coronavirus Pandemic, it may be that there is no adequate artificial substitution for real, human interpersonal interaction. We are social animals, and ever since paleolithic times, we have craved closeness with other humans who are not in our immediate families. How can we move forward and not lose hope during these strange times?

After many days of wandering aimlessly and letting my hours pass me by as I go to work and come home and watch television, I decided to sort out this strange situation that we all find ourselves in. For seniors especially, we have had the course of our lives altered by this pandemic. Rarely do we see the direct consequences of current events in our day to day lives. It may be easy to ignore these realities, but at some point, we all have to come to terms with these new conditions. We will not be going back to school until May 1, but things are so up in the air right now that even that may be subject to change. Therefore, we may not go back to school this year, and for seniors, that means that our High School years are pretty much over. As things stand right now, we will not have a prom and we most likely will not have graduation. 

We all may have a different approach when it comes to making the best of this situation. For me, the only way I was going to maintain positivity throughout all of this would be to try and think about it as a blessing. I am going to college in the fall, and knowing I have two extra months to prepare for that is actually quite convenient. More time to write scholarship essays, more time to save money, more time to mentally prepare for the transition that I am going to make. 

I hope that everybody finds some way to make the best out of this situation because it really is difficult. We are being asked to sacrifice normalcy for a short time to avert a potentially apocalyptic situation, and if we stick together by staying apart we can get through this. There have been events throughout history where it was difficult to imagine things ever being the same, but I have faith in people and I know that there are a lot of really brilliant human beings doing everything they can to make everybody whole again. Until then, I wish everybody good luck.