By Skylar Brock
As we all know, the Coronavirus swooped in and took us all by surprise. At first, it felt like everything would be fine in the United States, people were making jokes online about the virus when it was only happening in China. But soon enough, it made its way across Europe and to America, and it got bad. Before we knew it everything was being shut down, everything had to be stopped, and state by state we were getting put on lockdown. Everyone’s lives suddenly had to go on hold. For some reason, we all went into a frenzy about toilet paper? People lost their jobs, important events were postponed or canceled, and of course the most obvious thing: people are dying in mass amounts. As a high school senior, this is my perspective on Covid-19.
I’m upset there are some people I will probably never see again. I’m upset that I won’t get to go to prom.
Now I am completely aware of the massive amount of hate that is going towards high schoolers for expressing how they feel about this virus, especially us seniors. We’re told by people who got to have their senior prom and graduation that we shouldn’t be complaining, that at least we didn’t have to stop our school year to go fight in a war, that it could be so much worse, and various other things. I don’t think this is the right way to be treating anyone who is upset, and not just because I’m part of that group. I’m upset there are some people I will probably never see again. I’m upset that I won’t get to go to prom. I’m upset that after all these years of school, I won’t get to walk across that stage and get my diploma. I’m upset that I don’t get to have the normal senior experience.
Of course, I’m aware it could be so much worse, all of us are. But that doesn’t mean our feelings should be invalidated. We’re going to be sad over something this important to us all being thrown away. We’ve looked forward to these things for our entire lives, and now they’re gone, we never get to experience them.
We should be allowed to be sad over it, without being attacked and invalidated. People have feelings, and despite how stupid someone else thinks they are, it doesn’t just get rid of them.
On the other hand, some behaviors should be reprimanded, such as the way some Americans are dealing with this virus. There are people that are still going out all the time, meeting in groups, not social distancing, not washing their hands as much as they should, the list goes on. We all would love to go out and see our friends, go back to our normal lives, but we have to wait. The people that are going out unnecessarily are only making the problem worse. No matter what you believe about this virus, it’s better to be safe than sorry. We have got to stop doing dumb things if we want everything to go back to the way it was before all this.
Either way, I think we can all agree this whole situation is awful. No matter how it’s affected us, we’ve all been impacted by it in some way. The way that everything changed all of a sudden was such a shock to everyone. How things changed was also such a major difference to anything that has ever happened. As this is being written, we are being told that the curve in some states is finally beginning to flatten. I want to be able to live normally again as much as anyone else, even if I’m not able to go back to school. To be able to see my friends again and get out of my house. No matter how much love there is in a family, I think everyone’s going a little bit crazy having to be around the same few people 24/7. All that can be done now is for all of us to do our part in social distancing and stay hopeful things will return to how they were soon.
