As I write this, we approach our twelfth month of quarantine, a full year of COVID-19 lockdowns. Thinking back to March of 2020, it feels like an entire world away. Most college students were making plans for spring break, making plans to visit friends or go on vacation. What we couldn’t have predicted was the way entire states went into lockdown, essentially putting our lives on hold. 

Last year, when we left our colleges or high schools or jobs, we never truly went back. This event has changed the trajectory of all of our lives permanently. I would love to suggest that our lives will eventually return to normal, but I can’t confidently say that. 

Somehow we have made it through 12 months of a two-week lockdown. Throughout the quarantine, we have done various things to keep our attention. We baked bread, made a lot of TikToks, learned some coffee-making tricks, and started watching tons of shows. It is hard to believe it’s only been a single year, and yet here we are. 

It sucks a lot that we live in an era that includes a literal plague, but it seems 20 for 20 at this point. It’s undoubtedly scary, and I’m sure when the next generation of people learn about this era, they will feel we were ignorant or silly. I think we should own our fear. We live in a world where breathing on someone could kill them. That’s terrifying. 

We don’t know how much longer we will have to wear masks in public, or stand six feet away from other people or anything like that. There is no telling how quickly or slowly the world will be able to recover from this. My only hope is that we all make it through it. 

As the years go on and we get further away from this event in our lives, I hope we can look back to this time and grow from it.