#1: Lexie

As a child that has gone through the pandemic, I can easily stand for the fact that this year hasn’t been fun. It’s been more like going on a rollercoaster. One in a pitch black tunnel, in which you have no idea where you are going. You just sit there and wait for the ride to end, but it doesn’t seem to end, ever. Sometimes you think you see a light, but you learn that wasn’t the light you were looking for. You soon realize that the light will come when you wait. You’ll see a bigger glimpse everyday, until you make it out. 

Although after all of the metaphoric ways to put this year, there are realistic ways to put it also. As an example, this year is nowhere near normal, and nowhere near fair in many ways. Although life isn’t made to be fair, it’s made to work, and the technicality of making something work isn’t always the ideal way to do it. This year, I never changed classrooms, and I barely had a different teacher just like in elementary school. One of the only differences from the beginning of my 5th grade year to all of my 6th grade year, except for the mask, was that I showed up to a middle school instead of an elementary school. This year I didn’t get to have a locker, and I just brought my backpack to my classroom. I never had to change rooms, other than for orchestra and gym, and for those classes I didn’t need much, or any, work that wasn’t just on my chromebook. Although the lockers weren’t the weirdest part of the year for me. 

The weirdest part would be wearing masks. Through masks, smiles were hidden, and happiness was only to be heard. You could never realize how much humanity relied on human looks and facial expressions until you lost it. So many times, teachers lip read from children when they speak in a very whispery voice, but that wasn’t an option this year. Many students rely on praise and pride from smiles to keep them going with assignments, and that wasn’t an option this year. So many things weren’t an option this year, and as I implied before it just wasn’t fair, but it was part of the technicality that we needed, so it happened. That’s just how life is, but this wasn’t the only way that we lost connection this year. 

That award would have to go to quarantine. When we got quarantined this year our class lost so much connection from each other, but we lost more connection from our teacher. We weren’t able to speak to her about what we needed in classes and what we needed to boost our grades. We lost so much happiness from the quarantine also, and that could never be bought back. This year my class was more lively than ever, and it was as if they strived to have fun. Yet when we were quarantined, we weren’t able to have that kind of fun. Once we were in the middle of a classroom party, or event,  and we were interrupted by getting called to get quarantined. It was like our class shut down. We all stopped the laughter, and the smiles, that we were starting to not be hidden as much anymore. So much of this year was just shut down. 

So that is why I wanted to share how I felt about this Pandemic. It is hard, and sad, and it just makes many situations hard to smile in. Yet when we come out, our world will be different, and that is if we wait for the rollercoaster to come out of the tunnel. If we are just patient. Then we will be freed, and we can all take in smiles, and my year as a child, and for many children, can be different, and more joyful, and in all, happy.