Michelle George | Week 16: COVID-19 Memories
Photo Credit: Morris, Elena. "10 Books Every Theater Lover Should Read." Artsboston, 9 August 2016, www.artsboston.org/2016/08/09/national-book-lovers-day/. Accessed 14 May 2025.
COVID-19 is a memory that has been planted in our minds for years and probably for the rest of our lives. I remember when my elementary school shut down for just two weeks in March of 2020, I was ecstatic that I got an extended spring break.
I mean come on...imagine two weeks off of school with no homework, no tests, no Speech Festival tryouts. Just pure fun.
I clearly remember those two weeks. Gosh. I was blasting Taylor Swift left and right, baking monkey bread with my sister, and watching six hours straight of crime investigation every day.
However, that fun soon started to become pure boredom as two weeks of another "spring break" turned into two months of pure isolation. I stopped having any human interaction with my friends, teachers, or even the people at the park. The only people that I saw and talked to were my family. The only "playtime" that I got outside was purely in my backyard...with no toys...just me and the sharp blades of grass sitting next to the rosy red and butter yellow roses. The recesses that my friends and I spent embodying characters that we read about such as Thea and Geronimo Stilton, Nancy Drew, as well as Jack and Annie Smith from The Magic Tree House books turned into my eleven-year-old self begging my family to be substitutes for my friends, forcing my mom to be Thea Stilton; my dad to be Geronimo Stilton but also Jack Smith; and I would be Annie Smith as well as the four friends of the Stilton family.
As months continued, I realized how that daily routine of going outside and playing with my friends at 12 p.m. now turned to playing with my parents at 5:30 p.m. when they were all done with work. All the routines I once had in school all disappeared and slowly, I started to realize that life would not go back to the way it was. This pandemic time is not only a major event in history but rather a memory that shaped the way I grew up.
I mean come on...imagine two weeks off of school with no homework, no tests, no Speech Festival tryouts. Just pure fun.
I clearly remember those two weeks. Gosh. I was blasting Taylor Swift left and right, baking monkey bread with my sister, and watching six hours straight of crime investigation every day.
However, that fun soon started to become pure boredom as two weeks of another "spring break" turned into two months of pure isolation. I stopped having any human interaction with my friends, teachers, or even the people at the park. The only people that I saw and talked to were my family. The only "playtime" that I got outside was purely in my backyard...with no toys...just me and the sharp blades of grass sitting next to the rosy red and butter yellow roses. The recesses that my friends and I spent embodying characters that we read about such as Thea and Geronimo Stilton, Nancy Drew, as well as Jack and Annie Smith from The Magic Tree House books turned into my eleven-year-old self begging my family to be substitutes for my friends, forcing my mom to be Thea Stilton; my dad to be Geronimo Stilton but also Jack Smith; and I would be Annie Smith as well as the four friends of the Stilton family.
As months continued, I realized how that daily routine of going outside and playing with my friends at 12 p.m. now turned to playing with my parents at 5:30 p.m. when they were all done with work. All the routines I once had in school all disappeared and slowly, I started to realize that life would not go back to the way it was. This pandemic time is not only a major event in history but rather a memory that shaped the way I grew up.
Hello again Michelle! I really enjoyed reading your blog post from this week, mainly because it brought out my own memories going through the Covid pandemic. Although our experiences obviously differ, it is one of few events in life that all of us went through, the year long period of total isolation. I think for me it was an interesting year, as it created a gap after which I had a total reset of how school should work in 8th grade, and I sort of had to relearn how to be a student. My online year was a very mixed experience, which involved me largely disregarding classes and spending a lot of time playing video games online, and not being able to socialize with my friends in the usual way. But I think it also served as a growing experience for me and a lot of us, as we had to deal with the real world where unplanned things often happen and we just have to work around it. I really enjoyed reading your blog posts throughout the year, and I hope you had as much fun writing them as I had reading them this semester!
ReplyDeleteHey Michelle! I really enjoyed and resonated with your final blog this week on COVID-19 and the memories we created during the pandemic and specifically during quarantine. I vividly remember March 13, 2020, the day we were told that we would be getting a week off from school. I don’t think anyone expected that this would turn into what it did.
ReplyDeleteJust like you, I felt an extreme sense of boredom during quarantine and used the internet excessively to make up for my loss of contact with my friends. My life was turned upside down, as were the lives of people across the globe. I was incredibly lonely and yet entirely peaceful, enjoying fun-filled pizza nights with my family but disconnection with my friends. I loved your mention of all the books you read, as I read all the same books when I was in elementary school.
Overall, I truly enjoyed your final blog and I hope to read more from you in the future!
Hi Michelle! I really resonate with the sense of boredom you felt in quarantine, and honestly, it feels like that year and a half has divided my life into two parts, before and after quarantine. I was still able to play with my friends, since two of them lived in the same community as me, but for my other friends, I didn’t see them for a whole year. As a result, I was online almost the whole day, texting my friends and trying to find some connection during that time. It’s strange that we were isolated in one of our most important social transitions, so it feels like life was delayed by a year. To me, quarantine feels like one big blur of online classes, having really long hair, texting my friends, and arguing with them online. I remember always being on my IPad during online classes, and never paying attention. I’m definitely not one of the people who liked quarantine, since I felt really lonely and cooped up every day. Once school started, I was really eager to start talking to other people again. The transition from quarantine to 8th grade was jarring, since it felt like I went from being a little elementary schooler to a girl who was one year off of high school.
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