Leaving school on the last day before Spring Break, thoughts of relaxing in the sun with their best friends, sleeping in every morning, and enjoying a break from the stress of school work were present in every student’s head. Towards the end of Spring Break, most students looked forward to seeing friends, getting back on a schedule, and enjoying the last bit of the school year. No one would have ever guessed they would be spending their last quarter of school stuck in their houses under a statewide lockdown. With most people eagerly ushering in the New Year with high hopes for what the year had to bring, a global pandemic is, to say the least, disappointing. 

     Due to the boredom of quarantine, most people live on a day to day basis, only thinking about the future as a representation of possible freedom and escape from the lockdown. However, what most people tend to overlook is how surviving a global pandemic will impact us in the future. Will we change our behavior to prevent such a disaster from happening again? Or will we return to our careless ways? Will life ever go back to how it was before, or will we be traumatized forever and paranoid of human contact? What about the seniors, who spent the time they should have been making memories with their friends that they will never see again, going to sporting events, dancing at prom, walking across the stage at graduation, locked in their houses with only a cell phone to keep them connected to the outside world? Or the freshmen, who were supposed to use this time to find themselves, to figure out who they really are, and to develop into mature versions of themselves? 

     Some people speculate that we as a society will become less polarized, with the virus’ lack of discrimination of who it infects, people have realized that we are all human, all vulnerable in the face of nature. They also believe that reform will come, as the coronavirus has highlighted the weaknesses in our systems, and the things that we thought were impossible, such as housing for the homeless, or accessing money that we thought our nation did not have (politico.com). 

     SA students believe that they will remember this for as long as they live. Seniors especially, who never would have guessed that a global pandemic would be how they would remember their senior year of high school. 

     “I’m going to look back and think how the virus has stopped me from seeing my closest friends during the 4th quarter of my senior year,” Senior Jordan Simmons said. “I will never forget how unfair it was for me and my grade.” 

     Some students try to see this pandemic in a positive light. 

     “I think that this virus has had a really negative effect on our community as a whole,” Junior Dallas Ford said. “However, I am hopeful that in the end it will bring us together and allow us to give each other a helpful hand and that it will overall help the SA community to feel as one and allow us to appreciate each other more than we did before.” 

     Hopefully, we as a community and our fellow inhabitants of Earth will not let the victims of this suffering caused by this virus be in vain. 

     “We will probably all appreciate the everyday interactions we have with other people, even the small ones,” Dr. Krissy Rehm said. 

     We need to let this time of isolation bring us together in the long run, and appreciate the things we take for granted, like our friends and family, and our health. There is hope that we may change our ways and be responsible in a time like this and realize that maybe the things that set us apart really weren’t that important after all.