Staying at home this much has helped lead this generation to learn more about ourselves, and our society as a whole. We were able to take this time and realize that what’s “normal” shouldn’t be normal.
How COVID-19 impacts our generations
With students having begun online learning on Aug. 13 due to COVID-19, people are already asking “what will happen next?”. Confirmed cases are going down in Texas, but they’re at a halt. At the start of the pandemic, it was widely thought that by now everything would be back to normal. However, it’s possible that it won’t be “normal” for a while, and maybe that’s a good thing.
Face to face learning is starting Sept. 3rd for those who selected it, creating an illusion of normality. “Normal” is something that we have all longed for since the first couple of months of quarantine. It was fun at first; when spring break was extended a week or two, or when we started online school and things were easy. Then another two weeks got canceled, and another two weeks, and so on until the whole rest of the 2019-2020 school year was gone. We were thrown out of our comfort zones into a way of learning, and living, that we were not used to.
Staying at home this much has helped lead this generation to learn more about ourselves, and our society as a whole. We were able to take this time and realize that what’s “normal” shouldn’t be normal. Going back to face to face learning so soon contributes to an old definition of normal that we shouldn’t abide by. We’re still in the middle of a pandemic, thousands upon thousands of people have died, and then there are still many social issues that need to be addressed.
This time spent social distancing has made me realize that there needs to be change; change in the way we live, change in the way we treat others, and change in our society. Many teenagers have realized the difference that needs to be made, and some of us may grow up advocating for that difference. “normal” after COVID-19 is over as it’s causing us to change our definition of normal in our daily lives. It impacted the way many of us view the world, and ourselves.
The exponential rise in COVID-19 Cases
danielfoster437 from Creative Commons, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Just one week after hitting 10 million COVID-19 cases, the U.S. has hit 11 million. Staff reporter Haille Hughes says there is no doubt that cases are surging, and as people are getting more restless, they’re getting more reckless.
Just one week after hitting 10 million COVID-19 cases, the U.S. has hit 11 million. There’s no doubt that cases are surging, and as people are getting more restless, they’re getting more reckless.
While COVID-19 originated in late 2019, most in the U.S. would recognize March 13 as the start of the downward spiral that has been 2020. For a lot of students and educators, it was the last day of a semi normal life before corona really hit.
As schools shut down, so did businesses both big and small.This threw everyone into a life they were not used to, and we’ve lived with this life for the past eight months. People are getting tired of all of it, and it makes sense. We can’t expect people to accept this as the new normal; especially when the old normal lasted years. However, if people miss the old normal so much, we have to stop pretending that nothing ever happened.
After about mid September, cases have been going up exponentially. People are hanging out in large groups, they’re not wearing masks, and they’re going to and hosting parties. They’re doing the very opposite of what we need to be doing. That’s why cases have been rising these past few months. People are tired of the strain this pandemic has put on their lives, so they’re being reckless everything as close to normal as possible.
The more we cover ourselves with this veil of normality, the more harm it’s going to cause us. You can’t run or hide from problems as big as a pandemic. That’s why it’s important to continue the same practices we had at the start of all this. We need to keep wearing masks, we need to keep social distancing, and we need to stop acting like everything is normal. It’s hard, it sucks, but if we as a country can do this, we can decrease cases exponentially, instead of raising them.