Jamie Lammers, Nederland. I vividly remember the afternoon that would eventually reveal itself to be the afternoon of my last day of school. It was Thursday, March 12, 2020. In choir, the Loquations watched the concert that they had performed the previous night and started hearing whispers of games and other activities being canceled. Elizabeth Evans, our choir/theater director, recommended we take our music folders home in case school was suddenly canceled. During Spanish class, the principal, Mr. Rick Elertson, announced something that sent me into a frenzy: nearly all of the extracurricular activities for the next two weeks to a month were canceled, and I was left dumbfounded. Cast members of the planned spring musical Urinetown pulled other members aside to tell them that rehearsal after school was no longer an option and suggested other potential options to find a way to rehearse. That was the final blow for me. I had to take a walk to settle my thoughts, finding myself in an empty middle level gym and remembering the time I spent in it when I was in middle school. We had our final musical rehearsal that afternoon. Evans allowed us to yell and curse out all of the stresses of our day, and we all worked as hard as we could knowing that we wouldn’t be able to rehearse together like that for a while.

Then, that evening, with no additional warning, school was canceled through spring break. It was the start of a chain of cancellations that resulted in school being cancelled for the entirety of the final quarter. At first, the idea of learning the rest of our class material online every day wasn’t too daunting for me. I’ve had quite a few online classes over the years, needing to take one for at least one semester every single year since 8th grade. However, about halfway through the quarter, I started steadily losing motivation to do my work. I still did it, of course, but I started getting more and more lost in wormholes of YouTube videos and games on my phone while doing my work, desperate for a distraction during it all. It’s only now that the loss of our graduation ceremonies have come into the equation that I’ve started to get truly upset at everything that’s been going on. Not being able to have an in-person ceremony the way that Ned has done it in past years was distressing for so many of us, including myself, and with so many people trying to come up with different ideas for a ceremony before the new official graduation date of July 25th, I honestly got sick of thinking about it. Thinking about what could have been versus what was/is hurt in a strange way.

Being stuck at home for essentially the last two months seemed like what I would normally do for an extended holiday anyway, but now, for me, it’s finally truly starting to feel different. The constant sudden changes in school plans have bothered me because of the loss of control that everyone is feeling right now, but I don’t think the other consequences of the quarantine have really set in for me until recently. I’ve actually started worrying about going outside more than staying inside because I’m already a bit of a germaphobe as it is, but there’s an extra layer for me: I’m a type 1 diabetic. I’m immunocompromised. Keeping that in mind has also made me almost paranoid in trying to follow coronavirus protocol. At the same time, I understand that I’m luckier than most: my mom is retired and my dad can work from home, so our main source of income is still present, and I ultimately managed to get enough motivation to continue my school work and finish the assignments I needed to get done. However, that doesn’t mean that the loss of control and the stresses that I have as an individual aren’t valid. It doesn’t mean that the stresses that anyone has felt as an individual aren’t valid. It doesn’t mean that us students don’t miss hanging out with our friends, talking with the teachers and staff of NMSHS during the week, and embracing a normal routine.

We’re all going through similar worries, a similar loss of control. It’s the specific worries we all have as individuals that vary. For me, those worries are not getting to go to school with other students and seeing my friends, not being able to perform our spring musical and final choir concert, knowing other students won’t get to finish their sports seasons, and knowing that our graduation won’t feel even close to the way we planned. For others, it might be missing the feeling of going to work or going on family vacations or even losing their main source of income.

During this insane time, it’s important for all of us to step back and take a mental break every now and again. Hopefully, we will all get through this together and we will all make it out the other side. It just might take longer than we all thought.

(Originally published in the May 21, 2020, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)