My COVID-19 Pandemic Experience

At the beginning of the lockdown, my local animal shelters were asking the community for help because they had a surplus of animals, so my family decided to foster a dog for a few weeks in hopes of lifting some weight off of their shoulders. He brought such a light into our home during such a scary time!

Since schools were closed, I wasn't able to experience my middle school graduation. Regardless, my family made me feel so special by putting together our own makeshift celebration in our driveway. Going from middle school to high school might've turned out differently than I thought it would, but no matter what, it was still a big accomplishment!

While spending a larger amount of time at home, my friends and I were almost always bored and looking for something to do. Luckily, lots of new trends were overflowing our social media. Here's our take at the cute halloween ghost trend! Small things like this made our days much more positive given the current circumstances we were living in.

I began my freshman year of high school in August of 2020, which was completely through Zoom. Eventually we were given the option to go back in person or to just continue online, and while a few of my friends chose to physically attend, I stayed home for the rest of the year. This was my English teacher at the time, he was the best! I'll never forget how much he cared about our well-beings.

My 15th birthday was spent in my driveway with my closest friends, all of us wearing masks, and having my favorite people throw me/participate in a birthday drive-by parade. Turning 15 is a huge deal in Hispanic culture and is usually accompanied with a large party called a Quinceañera, but unfortunately those weren't happening at this time. I still felt so special and loved though!

My friend group in high school would constantly have our own Zoom meetings and treated it as a big FaceTime call. We'd talk and play video games for hours. While we may have been physically apart, we still found a way to come together. I'll always cherish these memories!

This was the first time I had the opportunity to meet a few of my new high school friends in person. Exactly one year after we went home for a "week-long break" in eighth grade and never went back, I was in a completely different position in life. While it wasn't necessarily ideal, I was still grateful to have met such amazing people during the pandemic.

A little over a month later is when I got to see all of my friends in person! We were preparing to take our end of course exams (which were, in other words, our final exams) and had to go to campus in person to take them. I still talk to most of the people in this photo today!

After the rollercoaster of a year I had, I decided to alter my appearance as much as I could so I could look as different as I felt. They say that hair holds memories, so in that case, I chopped it all off and bleached half of it! I felt way better having the mentality that this was the beginning of my journey of a new chapter.