On April 27th, 2020, I was accepted to the Osceola School of the Arts, and months later in July, I moved to Florida with my family. Several nights were spent staring up at my bedroom ceiling, wondering if I made the right decision to come here. I constantly doubted myself and my talent up to the days of walking into the school, especially during the midst of a nationwide pandemic. Wearing masks wasn’t something I was used to because as an online student I barely had the chance to go outside. This cloth mask was my only protection from over a hundred other students that I didn’t know, especially in new distancing and COVID protocols. It felt like people were constantly in my space, and I hated anyone who stood too close to me. I was joking when I yelled six feet apart to my friends before, but it genuinely became my reality.

In the beginning, the classes I was in were usually quiet. The typical bustling of students chatting amongst themselves was now gone and replaced with the hushed chatter of concerned teachers looking over their fresh lineup of quarantined students. Every time the announcements came on with a new list of pupils that were exposed and needed to go home, anxiety rushed through me as I feared my friends or even I would have to leave. I created a bond with the other students around me through this. Though, if we shared a friend who was quarantined, or I knew the student in which our teacher was trying to contact on Teams, it felt nice to share this fear together, in a bittersweet sort of way. It didn’t feel right that students were dropping like flies, even when it slowly became a norm in our school. As seats next to mine emptied, I grew more and more conscious of the diseased world around me. I believe other students can relate when I say that I was at the point of hoping that I got quarantined too, just to be out of the cloud of sickness my classes became.

Socialization was hard, and making friends was even harder. I was used to making eye contact when I met someone and observing their facial expressions so I can judge how they feel about the conversation and make it more interesting. Now, it was just a guessing game. Were you smiling under that mask, or smirking at me because I said something stupid? The struggle drove me to stop making an attempt to talk to people, and I remained in a very tight-knit circle of friends that I had in my homeroom. But as more got quarantined, our schedules were suddenly switched, and I was removed from the homeroom that I was once comfortable in, the one with all of my friends and students I got to know. Sitting together at lunch, perfectly distanced from one another was something we had to learn to do. I never had to sit at a complete table apart from the people I was talking to, or not be allowed to pull up a chair at theirs and talk to them. It was something I had to get used to, and that was difficult.

My year of grief has brought me to the limit, though I slowly learned to persevere through everything and keep my grades on track. The friends, family, and teachers that surrounded me were there for me every step of the way and even deepened our bond for the next year. This year has been one of my worst, but I managed to pursue focusing on my studies and not get distracted with things that wouldn’t benefit my education. As my 2021 school year comes to a peaceful close, worries that I wasn’t good enough began to drift from my mind. Getting everything done is one thing, but doing your best is another.