Covid-19 is the sickness that has taken over our daily lives for over a year and a half now. Everyone is being affected by it differently. Businesses have changed their cleanliness policies, schools mandate different safety precautions, and even in our own homes people clean more frequently than before. Here at Lewis Cass, precautions have been changing rapidly. We have had to wear masks, stay sit six feet apart, spray desks, etc., but recently the school took on a new idea, no mask mandates and no quarantine for people within close contact.

I had recently been in close contact with someone who was infected by COVID-19. I tested over and over again only to show negative tests every time. By school policy, I had to be quarantined for one week, but when I went back to school I had to endure a new process. Every morning students galore lined up in the Auxiliary Gym to have their temperature taken and we only had two thermometers. Splitting them between junior high and high school students seemed to be the smartest idea, but all together the morning routine seemed rather absurd. Most students were missing half of their first period class, wandering the halls, or being held back by a small fever that could have been nothing. While I was in line, students around me were coughing and sneezing (I even got sneezed on, gross.) So, everyone being compacted into a tiny room did not make very much sense to me when someone amongst us could have been very sick.

All awhile in this crazy new Covid time, students by the dozens were called down every day to be informed about contact tracing. It seemed like the movie Groundhog’s Day because of the repetition where students would be caroled in front of the library towards the end of the day. After all of this sickness had spread, Lewis Cass finally came to the decision to put us in quarantine for a week. I wonder if other schools will experience the same problems. North Western had recently changed to the “mask optional” quota that we had been following. This school wished to keep their students safe all while staying in school. By giving their kids the option, Covid could come to a halt if one were to wear a mask; however, our school did the same thing but students are dropping like flies left and right. Will they experience these awfully sick times as well?

I did not want my senior year to be full of the hacking and wheezing disease that has plagued most of my high school career already, but it is only September and I am already talking to my teachers through a screen. When school returns, does one think that we will have masks yet again? Will school go back to how it was last year? I do not know the answer yet, but I do hope that we can experience school in person, so I will put on a mask if that is what it takes. I am sure the whole school feels the same with the thoughts of March 2020 hidden in the backs of our minds.