According to brookings.edu, Covid-19 has closed schools in many countries and reopening is a complicated process.  Erika Hart (’22) shared how life has changed for her during Covid-19. She has been able to find something positive within all the negatives.  The positive is that Hart can sleep in and be more mentally active for school. 

“Schooling at home is a form of learning that takes a lot of self-motivation, something that is gained with lots of sleep,” Hart said.

Covid-19 has impacted students in many ways. Hart has had a hard time dealing with the changes that have happened because of Covid. One of the things that Hart has struggled with the most is that she doesn’t get to see her friends as much as she would like. 

Before Covid-19, Hart could see her friends whenever and wherever she wanted to. Now, she has to think of things that she would never have thought of such as masks, hand sanitizer, and staying six feet apart. But the biggest thing is the impact this has had on her friendships. She never gets to see her friends the way that she did before. However, Hart (‘22)  said, “True friends are never apart.”

Hart said life used to be so simple. What used to be spontaneous now has to be planned out.  But it’s not all bad. Hart said that schooling is tolerable.

“We should start with two days of school and we should end with two,” Hart said, “changing the way that we were doing schools now to five days a week would put us in a hole that we would not be able to get out of.”  

With that being said, Hart struggles with being separated from her friends. 

“Not being able to see the people that I used to see is hard, but I’m getting through it,” Hart said. 

She is getting through the schooling portion of it well. “I’m getting through the school year knowing that next year is my last year, and I will be off to college,” Hart said.

Despite the bad things, she has found ways to focus on her school work and think of her friends. “Good friends are like stars,” Hart said, “You don’t always see them, but you know they’re always there.”  

Hart reminds herself of this every day and that they will always be there, even though she does not get to see them the way she used to.