One year ago, it was spring break, I had just turned 16 and was excited to be the age of every high school protagonist. This was back when the virus hadn’t made it to the United States yet. Now, it has been one year since the coronavirus swept across the nation, and it was the worst birthday gift I’ve gotten.

As of today, I’m 17. And the virus and it’s death toll have not slowed at all. But my routine has fluctuated for the better in this past year. I practically do the same thing I did when the virus didn’t happen, except now I carry and wear a mask, and we do our work on computers. If anything, things got easier for the students with the virus.

Getting quarantined and having to stay home sucks. It especially sucked for me because being at home doing classwork provided no enrichment to me. I couldn’t absorb anything I was taught. A good thing though, is that I didn’t have to wait for lunch or have to ask to go to the bathroom. However, I did have to stand by a window for periods of time just to get some sunlight in me.

School will always be school. We always have stuff to learn, important quizzes to take, and of course, colleges will not stop emailing, rain or shine. They did let us off easy when the whole thing started, letting us get up late and such. But now that I’m in person, it’s being in class at 7:25 as before.

Theatre is what keeps me going. I’m in the process of my first shows in a year at UIL. We’ve even already advanced past the first round! When quarantine started, I kept singing show tunes in the shower, just hoping for my next show to be sooner rather than later. But a year later, I can see the wait was worth it, and the wait for this pandemic to be over? It’s also worth it.