How has COVID affected you? Whether it has affected travel plans, ruined holidays, or caused someone you have loved to pass, somehow COVID has affected you in your everyday life. 

Back in March of 2020 COVID started to become a reality when Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf chose to close schools for two weeks to slow the spread of the virus. It took many of us by surprise, but we enjoyed our two weeks off of school. Then, the time got extended, eventually closing our schools for the rest of the year, causing us to all become virtual students for the rest of our school year. Many people struggled with virtual learning, causing grades to suffer. As a high school student, grades suffering made a large impact on many people’s mental health. Soon, summer came, and nobody had a care in the world, but we were all excited to go back to school and see our friends in our senior year.

Lately, COVID has taken over our area, turning everyone’s lives upside down, once again. Our school has been shut down again, many people’s Thanksgiving and Christmas plans were completely different when they could not spend it with extended family, and worst of all, we are losing our loved ones. The numbers have been growing, causing more and more shutdowns, leading to people who need money the most being unemployed. In the last eleven months everyone’s worlds have been affected and nobody has any idea when our lives will return to the normal they once were.