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The Impact of Isolation
During the height of quarantine I was left alone, anxious, and unproductive. My parents being
separated, I rarely spent time with them because my father lived in the city and my mom was
then working at the hospital everyday. It was a time when there was no way we could see our
friends and elders, the people with whom I’d spend a majority of my days with. I had never
experienced such a state of loneliness and boredom. It was a very hard time for me in terms of
adjustment
but once regulations started to lift, I had one of the best summers of my entire life.
My mother being a nurse during the pandemic, she was exposed daily to the virus and the
harsh reality of how dangerous it was. When she came home after long hours, not once did she
complain about being tired but instead greeted me with love and hopeful words. I was more
impacted by the fact that she wasn’t home often over the fear of her and I getting sick because
at the time I still couldn’t understand how deadly covid was. Before quarantine, I would go from
school to practice so we always seemed to come home at the same time everyday but because
we were no longer allowed to do those things, I was home alone for most of the days.
Luckily quarantine came after the end of my senior year volleyball season and I was able to
have the last high school season of my favorite sport. My club season was unfortunately
cancelled before we could go to nationals and I had to lose some recruitment opportunities.
Going from doing what I loved daily to it being ripped away so unexpectedly, I was impacted in
a way that left me unable to find a positive in this situation. I remember being so regretful that I
didn’t do more or thank my coaches in person as much as they deserved.
Unable to see all my friends for months, I was consumed with thoughts of how routinely I
treated seeing the people I loved everyday. I seemed to dwell on every encounter I had with my
friends the last time I was around them and was unsatisfied with almost every one after
thinking of what exactly we said to each other. Of course we all stayed in contact through
technology but that could never match hearing and being so closely around them.
Communicating with my friends and teachers through a computer screen for my last year of
high school was something I could’ve never expected. Having ADHD, this negatively affected my
grades and made it very hard to retain and understand the information we were being taught
because of all the distractions at home. I thought of all the absences I had that September
through February and couldn’t believe how much I took school for granted.
On a positive note, by the summer my town had many of the regulations lifted and my friends
and I could do some of the things we missed dearly. We had all our prom, senior plans,
graduation, etc. taken away only for them to be given back to us over the summer by our
amazing school system. We had a masked graduation that allowed us to walk out in front of our
families, the ability to have graduation parties with under 50 people, and a socially distanced
senior picnic that allowed us to see our teachers one last time before going off to school.
Quarantine taught me the difficulties that came with isolation but the happiness that came with
finally feeling free. I learned and will remember forever that better days always follow the bad
ones.
During the height of quarantine I was left alone, anxious, and unproductive. My parents being
separated, I rarely spent time with them because my father lived in the city and my mom was
then working at the hospital everyday. It was a time when there was no way we could see our
friends and elders, the people with whom I’d spend a majority of my days with. I had never
experienced such a state of loneliness and boredom. It was a very hard time for me in terms of
adjustment
but once regulations started to lift, I had one of the best summers of my entire life.
My mother being a nurse during the pandemic, she was exposed daily to the virus and the
harsh reality of how dangerous it was. When she came home after long hours, not once did she
complain about being tired but instead greeted me with love and hopeful words. I was more
impacted by the fact that she wasn’t home often over the fear of her and I getting sick because
at the time I still couldn’t understand how deadly covid was. Before quarantine, I would go from
school to practice so we always seemed to come home at the same time everyday but because
we were no longer allowed to do those things, I was home alone for most of the days.
Luckily quarantine came after the end of my senior year volleyball season and I was able to
have the last high school season of my favorite sport. My club season was unfortunately
cancelled before we could go to nationals and I had to lose some recruitment opportunities.
Going from doing what I loved daily to it being ripped away so unexpectedly, I was impacted in
a way that left me unable to find a positive in this situation. I remember being so regretful that I
didn’t do more or thank my coaches in person as much as they deserved.
Unable to see all my friends for months, I was consumed with thoughts of how routinely I
treated seeing the people I loved everyday. I seemed to dwell on every encounter I had with my
friends the last time I was around them and was unsatisfied with almost every one after
thinking of what exactly we said to each other. Of course we all stayed in contact through
technology but that could never match hearing and being so closely around them.
Communicating with my friends and teachers through a computer screen for my last year of
high school was something I could’ve never expected. Having ADHD, this negatively affected my
grades and made it very hard to retain and understand the information we were being taught
because of all the distractions at home. I thought of all the absences I had that September
through February and couldn’t believe how much I took school for granted.
On a positive note, by the summer my town had many of the regulations lifted and my friends
and I could do some of the things we missed dearly. We had all our prom, senior plans,
graduation, etc. taken away only for them to be given back to us over the summer by our
amazing school system. We had a masked graduation that allowed us to walk out in front of our
families, the ability to have graduation parties with under 50 people, and a socially distanced
senior picnic that allowed us to see our teachers one last time before going off to school.
Quarantine taught me the difficulties that came with isolation but the happiness that came with
finally feeling free. I learned and will remember forever that better days always follow the bad
ones.