By Audrey Lovell, Staff Writer

Homecoming, a normal graduation, and fall Friday night lights are just a few things on the long list of activities students didn’t get to experience last school year. With school returning to “normal” this year, the hope that we will all get to make up for everything we have missed returns as well.

For others, this year is turning into a repeat of last year’s activities: sitting at home bored, online zoom calls and doing anything to waste the time away. 

So far, over 50 students at First Flight High School are already in quarantine, myself included. Not all these kids necessarily have COVID, but they came into close contact with a student who does. 

This year, each teacher creates a class seating chart so that if a student becomes positive, the school will know that the students seated near the positive contact could potentially be sick as well. . This is helpful because some carry the virus with no symptoms which makes it easy to be transferred to others unknowingly. 

While someone who is in quarantine may feel totally normal, they could still have COVID without knowing.  Although this process is crucial to help not spread the virus, I still wish it didn’t happen to me. 

In an attempt to get the quarantine numbers down, the Dare County Schools Board of Education mandated universal mask-wearing in schools beginning on Sept. 2. 

After being sent home on the fourth day of school due to close contact with a positive student, my days now consist of endless zoom calls and doing school work from my bed, which is much more difficult online than in-person. 

It’s easy to get behind in classes from home. Students are hesitant to ask for help and even if it’s received, it’s through a screen. Assistance from a teacher is always more useful in-person because that information just “clicks.”

It’s also a lot easier to get sidetracked from assignments outside of a classroom setting. There are more fun things to do at home than schoolwork. 

Another problem students may face while being stuck at home is an unorthodox sleep schedule.  If students will not be in the school building, why wake up super early for classes?

Although quarantine protects students’ health and those surrounding them, the damage to their grades and understanding of concepts may be worse. 

While quarantining, universal masking and COVID-positive friends and family members are the harsh reality of our high school lives right now, I remain hopeful that sometime soon this will come to an end and we will be able to enjoy our school years the same way we have in the past. 

Junior Audrey Lovell can be reached at 23lovellau71@daretolearn.org.