Coronavirus pandemic: A time for reflection

“We might never know how everything can suddenly change”.

By: María Carolina Pardo

As the countdown of the new year came, I believe everyone was excited for 2020. Every new year brings a breeze of hope and expectations, but it only took a couple of months to realize that this year was not what we expected. The coronavirus took our normal lives away, and we had to adapt quickly to a strange reality where every day in the news, there is new information about how many people are infected and how many people have died of coronavirus. A reality where we cannot go to school, hug people, see our friends or go to the cinema, where we have to be completely isolated for months.

This pretty unusual event hit us hard, as we were ready to give everything we had to have a good year, but one day we were at school and the next day we were told we had to continue our education online. Tenth grade is expected to be one of the most academically challenging years, as it is the penultimate year before we go to college. Besides that, we have to face the challenges of adapting to virtual learning, it has been rough. All of us know that our school is doing everything to give us the best possible education, but we still worry about the fact, that we are not learning as much as it would be if we were at school, that we are not doing enough, that we are not going to be as well prepared as we should. I believe that every student right now feels similarly and that many have also struggled with their feelings during this time, because even if many months have passed since the pandemic started, we still wonder what would we be doing, if this pandemic had never happened. 

Nonetheless, this pandemic has taught us that we can adapt to every situation, and we know that sooner or later we will come out of this situation with many things learned, such as strength, creativity, and patience. Many things have happened over these months of isolation, and I expect that maybe next year we will have all of the things that we were prepared for, such as face to face classes, or the opportunity to visit and choose a university and a career. All of us expect that our normality will return. Perhaps some things will soon change, but we hope we will be able to hug and be with people without the fear of getting sick and remember this time as something that taught us to appreciate the normality we so comfortably live in. We might never know how everything can suddenly change.