Quarantine in the eyes of a high school senior

In a few months, we will have been living in this scary ever-changing world for a year. That is a long time to be living a life like this. For almost everyone, this virus has changed all the factors of life, most for the worse, but every so often there is a shining light in all of this chaos. This virus started near the end of my junior year of high school and I started out thinking it was no big deal. Boy was I wrong. I enjoyed being able to sleep in and do school when I felt like it, and my school even canceled our finals for that semester. It felt like a very early summer, until it didn’t. My family had started to lose business and we weren’t getting the money we needed and what we would usually get per work week. I slowly stopped being able to see my friends as much, and even when we did get to hangout, it felt useless and strange. Summer came and passed quick and next thing I knew it was the start of my senior year. Now that the teachers had perspective on the whole online school issue, they had a plan down and ready to go. Unfortunately that plan requires me to sit at a desk in my room staring at a computer screen for almost five hours every school day. I do admit I enjoy being able to roll out of bed and wear pajamas to school every day, but by noon I am exhausted and have a migraine from the strain on my eyes. My school has switched to the hybrid schedule, where some kids go on certain days and the other half go on the other, but with two of my family members being high risk for this virus, I decided to stay fully virtual. Now that I am one semester away from being out of high school, the loss of a year that I was looking forward to is finally hitting me. Since my school was shut down near the end of my junior year, I won’t have a prom at all: junior or senior prom. I also am not getting my hopes up for a traditional graduation either. This year has definitely taught me a lot, but the main lesson I got from this whole experience is to never take what you have for granted, it could be taken away from you at any moment. I just hope that college will be a little more normal than this crazy year.