Hanging out with friends, concerts, sports events and so much more are a part of the normal high school experience. This is how all of us wanted and expected our teenage years to be like. But instead, we sit at our desks seven hours a day staring at a screen. We can’t easily see our friends. We don’t go to Friday night football games. We barely even go to school anymore. We lost the everyday social interaction with our friends and classmates at school. We eat lunch alone in our kitchens instead of at a table full of friends in the cafeteria. All motivation to excel in school like past years, has been lost. “What is the point?” we ask ourselves.

Everyday we do the same thing. Wake up, open Google Classroom, log into seven hours worth of online classes, do homework, and go to bed. We used to come to class every day looking forward to what fun activities we would be participating in and we couldn’t wait to talk to our classmates. The excitement of free blocks and finding out a class has been cancelled, that’s all been taken away. Now we don’t go to school, well we go two days a week for only 3 hours. Instead of waking up early, rushing to get ready and get to the bus stop or drive to school, we simply roll out of bed and open our laptops. We log into Google Classroom to listen to a lesson, but don’t even know what is going on anymore. We don’t get to talk to our classmates or make new friends. We fear having to speak up and unmute ourselves in classes. We go into breakout rooms just to sit there in silence. We don’t get to whisper to our friends during class or work on group projects. We are all isolated in our own spaces. 

Junior and senior prom, something everyone looks forward to. Gone. The class of 2021 didn’t get their junior prom and now their senior prom is on the line. They did not get any part of a normal senior year. Freshmen entered the school in hope to make new friends and enjoy the newfound freedom of finally being in high school. They looked forward to having free blocks and full lunches, something they didn’t have in middle school. But, they somehow ended up with a year worse than any other year in middle school. The class of 2022 got one normal year of high school, freshman year. Next year is their senior year that could be far from normal. The class of 2023 started 9th grade last year, but they never finished it. Halfway through their first year in high school, the whole world shut down, ending their chance of a normal high school experience. 

The social isolation has affected each and every one of us. Depression rates in teenagers have peaked during this pandemic, and overall mental health has gotten bad. Most people are worried about how the Coronavirus affects their physical health, but they seem to forget that all the precautions taken to keep people physically healthy has a negative effect on emotional well being. More than 2.5 million people have died from the Coronavirus itself. However, with all the emphasis on staying physically healthy at this time, we forget to check in on our mental health. During this time it is so important to check in on ourselves and others around us to make sure they are not only physically healthy, but that they’re emotionally healthy. 

The light is at the end of the tunnel. As bad as things have been, I can see that there is hope for the upcoming months. Bella Wong, the superintendent of Lincoln- Sudbury, has sent out two emails within this week. The first email we received was a new schedule; students who chose to be in person would come to school four days a week until lunch time. There would be no more cohorts except for the students who chose to be fully remote. The second email Ms. Wong sent out was informing us that we would soon be returning fully in person, five days a week for full days. The education commissioner of Massachusetts, Jeffrey Riley, mandated that elementary and middle schools return fully in person by April 26th. Weeks after, Riley mandated that high schools are to return fully in person, but the date is still to be determined.