Irony and Covid-19

Last year in March when Covid-19 was becoming prevalent, I constantly had conversations with my friends and family about it. It was all anyone could talk about at the time. When the virus entered my town, my friends and I didn’t take it very seriously, we figured it would pass. We went about our days and did what we wanted to do. We had a very sarcastic attitude towards the entire thing because we didn’t believe it would affect us. When we got the first warning that school was closing, we were excited. Every student across the nation was thinking “Wow, two weeks off from school that’s awesome we can do so much with that free time.” No one believed that this was going to spiral into what it has become. When my friends and I found out that school was going to close we looked at it in a positive way. My friends and I were pretty tired and burnt out from senior year so far due to the work we were doing in order to get ready for college, so we were excited for a break from school. What we didn’t realize was that this break was actually going to affect all of us in a fairly negative way.

At first, we believed that we would be able to hang out all the time and do what we wanted but once our parents started to take it seriously, we also began to notice that this wasn’t something we should be joking about. Soon enough, none of us were allowed to leave our homes or see each other and we all wished more than anything to go back to school — to go back to normal. Not being able to see my friends or go to school, mixed with it being winter and having nothing to do, really took a toll on me. It was interesting to have a lot of time to reevaluate my mindset towards this virus. From this experience, I can gather that the function that best fits with my realization about Covid-19 is “Distancing” and how that caused me to gain a new perspective. Once I had realized that this was a serious matter, my understanding of Covid-19 changed, and while still being safe, I believed that things would end soon. The fact that it has been over a year now is ironic in itself. We are STILL living in it with no concept of when it will end. Fortunately, for everyone, our lives have gotten better and our nation as a whole has taken the appropriate measures to help control the spread. We just have to continue to be patient and believe that we will make it out of this.