This school year has been one full of trials and tribulation. Once we left school when Covid-19 hit, that break went from an early spring break to a full on quarantine. Whether it be new restrictions, altered routines, or simply flipping our daily lives upside down, we’ve all been through a lot of drastic changes. It’s crazy to think that it’s been almost a year since all of this unfolded. At this rate, it feels like we might spend the rest of the school year online. FCPS is starting to let kids start coming back to school, but we have no idea how that’s going to go. While we hope we all get back in school at some point, for now, we still can check in and see how everyone’s doing.

NTI has been nothing short of a challenge, and one that a vast majority of us are tired of. Kids miss being in school, and teachers miss the kids. It’s been a long time since any of us have had a normal school day, and all of us ache for it. It’s not just the loss of normal school, but also these restrictions that have divided and isolated our entire community. Mental Health is rapidly going downhill for most of our community, and it’s hard to find someone who’s doing well during these times. Kids can’t see their friends, people are out of a job, and parents have been stressed with basically teaching their kids content, since NTI makes it so hard to learn anything. We can all agree that we are all pretty burnt out.

A sophomore student at Lafayette shares her struggles. When we asked her, she groaned openly. “This year has been an absolute nightmare,” she says. “Everybody’s been completely divided and isolated, which is terrible for us as a community. If I could change one thing about this virus, I’d make it so we could actually be together. I miss my friends, my siblings miss their friends, and of course, all of us miss school. NTI is a struggle, and none of us have learned anything this school year. Sure, this whole ‘stay home’ thing was great for the first month and a half, but it’s been the same thing for so long. We’re desperate to go back to school, back to work, and back to normal.”

Of course, different people have different circumstances, and we’ve all taken this event in varying ways. Some people find the isolation and the quarantine refreshing and healing. But, it’s been almost a year, and healing time has turned into loneliness and a time to settle into unhealthy habits, such as rejecting social interactions or relying on technology for everything. Other people might have been struggling this entire time, rather than finding joy in the start. Perhaps their business got closed down, somebody got sick, or they were stuck in an unhealthy home environment without any help or escape.

“I just want my life back,” the student continued. “It’s been so long since we first were cooped up inside in pure terror. But, it’s been almost a year now. Sure, we’re still under all these rules, but if we could at least make an effort to go back to normal, that would make everything so much better. My siblings could get off their computers with aching backs and go to school and be with their friends. I could see friends of my own and actually learn something my sophomore year of high school. Nobody knows how long it’ll be until we’re able to do that, but I know that that day will be one of the best days of my life.”

When all of this began, nobody knew how to react. We all freaked out. At the beginning, this was hectic and new, and we had no idea what to do. Almost a year later, we’re tired of all of it. We know what’s going on and we’ve been put under regulations to try and deal with it. It’s nothing new now. It’s getting old and exhausting, and we’re all ready to go back to what our lives were like before March of 2020. We’re ready to go back to school, back to work, and back to seeing the people we love. We don’t know when we will fully be able to do that, but we know for a fact that when that time comes, it will be welcomed with open arms.