By: Joey Berger

As we near the one-year anniversary of school closures around the world, many people have begun to wonder, was life better at the beginning of the lockdown? In mid-March of 2020 when Briarcliff announced that it would close all schools for two weeks due to the impending spread of Coronavirus, students seemed overjoyed at the prospect of less schoolwork and the belief that the virus would soon blow over and everything would go back to normal. We now all realize that nothing of the sort happened. As teachers scrambled to figure out how to continue to teach, students stuck at home were on social media, engaging with the new trends that were brought about with the lockdown. To many people it is now nostalgic to think of the beginning of quarantine: making TikToks dancing to “Supalonely” by Benee and “Savage” by Megan Thee Stallion, creating whipped coffee from recipes on TikTok, sitting on the couch watching Outer Banks and Tiger King before going on a walk with your family on nearby trails, doing a 10-minute Chloe Ting Abs-Workout while your parents run to Sam’s Club to see if there is any toilet paper left, and of course, meeting on Zoom for a family celebration. While this all just seemed normal at the time, now it feels like it was possibly a better and easier time. We are currently in the middle of the 2020-21 school year, and as hybrid mode replaced the infrequent, camera-off Teams meetings last year, the workload has piled up this year; the world seems to be adjusting.  Looking back, the beginning of the lockdown seems like a simpler time. Part of this was due to the fact that we knew so little about the true impact of the virus and how long the changes to our lives would last. Although it seems as if the current situation should be left in the past as soon as possible, the past calendar year was a time of our lives that we will certainly never forget.