Dallas high school students Nate Stitt and Eleanor Lockhart both remember the beginning of the pandemic, which hit during their spring breaks in March 2020. Everything changed overnight.
"We had to take all of our stuff home from school," Lockhart said. "I was just sitting with my books, trying to figure out Zoom school. It was miserable."
Lockhart said the beginning of virtual school was "disorganized," but Stitt said as time passed they really cherished being online. They were attending virtual school until February 2021, and then went to a hybrid model afterwards.
"The reason that I thrived online was mostly because I had the time to myself," Stitt said. "For example, if I just needed a night of rest, I would go to bed at 6 p.m. and then wake up at 4 a.m. and do whatever I needed. I know it sounds crazy, and it kind of was crazy, but that worked well for me."
Both said the pandemic and the isolation from the pandemic forced them to grow, as people and friends.
"It's shown me who I really care about, and who really cared about me," Lockhart said. "I'm sometimes an anxious person, so being able to know my friends really care about me has given me a lot of confidence in my relationships. It feels good to be liked, which is such a teenager thing to experience. [During the pandemic,] it was [a] teenager 'Breakfast Club' moment on steroids though, sitting in my room, texting all my friends."
Stitt said they noticed it took them a while to regain their social skills.
"Me as a 15-year-old is so different than me as a 17-year-old," they said. "I don't want to interact with people the same way I did at 15. I had to relearn that. Without two years of solid social interaction, I lost the growth that needed to happen for me."
Stitt is finishing up their junior year of high school at Greenhill, and Lockhart is a senior at Hockaday, two Dallas-area private schools. Both students acknowledged how much change 2022 could still bring.
"I think a lot of people are really tired," Stitt said. "For a lot of us, we're going to have to take breaks, and go to sleep at 6 p.m. when we get home from school, and that's perfectly okay, because we can take the time we need to. I feel like that's almost a necessity after this pandemic."
Lockhart is heading to college to study biochemistry, and is looking forward to graduating in the spring.
"I'm excited to get up and out," she said. "I pray and hope more than anything that my freshman year of college is normal. That's pretty much all I want right now. I just want to be a kid."
Got a tip? Email Elena Rivera at erivera@kera.org. You can follow Elena on Twitter @elenaiswriting.
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