With the National Covid-19 Emergency officially over, it puts the final stamp on a pandemic that many of us would like to forget. Even though the United States has really been out of the worst of it for well over a year, life has seemed to return to normal for most Americans. Yet, as we look back to where life was back in 2020, it can seem like a lifetime ago. 

The toilet paper crisis, stores shut down, and restaurants only doing take-out, are all things that we were experiencing just a few years ago. For all of the students, a normal day was filled with zoom calls, and doing all of the schoolwork from the comfort of their own home. Schools everywhere were closed, and almost every student can tell you about where they were when they found out that they were not coming back to school.

“I think the biggest difference is when we were all stuck at home everybody kind of lost the sense of companionship we have now. We couldn’t go see our friends or family everyday. I was definitely upset when I found out we couldn’t finish our eighth grade year. I had been looking forward to some eighth grade privileges we had at St. Joseph, but I had to miss them because of covid,” said junior Belah Shanks. 

For students in the 2024 graduating class, 2020 was the year that everything ended so abruptly, and all of the fun activities that come with being in eighth grade did not get to be experienced by the class of 2020. That meant that both confirmation and graduation both looked very different compared to other years.

“One of the biggest differences between now and 2020 is education. When we were in quarantine it was a whole different style of learning, there was no supervision of how work was getting done. Teaching yourself through just by looking things up became the main way of learning. This has changed since 2020, now if someone doesn’t understand something you can come face to face with a teacher that knows how to explain what you are trying to learn in multiple different ways,” junior Lucy Albers said. 

Education all over the country took a huge toll as the home setting proved to hurt many students. Reading levels and math skills got hit extremely hard for many students, because the environment at home simply is not compatible with a school setting. Combine that with other at home distractions, studying abilities for students took a heavy toll, especially when they returned to in person learning. 

“When I found out I would not be able to complete my 8th grade year I felt disappointed. I had such a tight group of friends and we always hung out with each other in and out of school. I was still able to talk to them through text and FaceTime but there was a different ambience which made connecting difficult. Without constant in person relationships quarantine felt like it was going on forever,” Albers said.

Thankfully we don’t have to go through that wild time anymore, and the worst of it is well past us. Life three years ago was something that we will likely experience only once in a lifetime, and all of the madness that Covid-19 brought is something that we don’t really need to go through again.