In 2020, I became a freshman in high school, which in itself, is already scary and intimidating. There were times I got so anxious I wanted to just go home and hide in my room. Funny enough, I had the opportunity to do just that for what I thought would be a good two weeks, and we all know what happened after that.

For a while it was great. I slept in every day, played a criminal amount of video games and otherwise had a very carefree first few months. After a while though, I feel like I lost some part of myself.

I forgot in some sense how to interact with people. It became hard to hold conversations with those over the phone, and I found comfort in the isolation, and anxiety in anything that wasn’t that. That fact about myself was scary to me. Eventually things got better, even after a lot of difficulty.

That being said, even though things are better, doesn’t mean they aren’t different.

I blinked as a sophomore, distracted by the chaos around me, and now I’m a senior about to go to college. I can’t help but think those few years I had were stolen away from me.

I wasn’t the only one whose high school years were thrown off track. I think it’s safe to assume that everyone’s years were changed in some significant way, Venice kids included. Sophomore year especially was impactful as it was the year that everyone came back in person.

“It was this weird limbo,” said senior Autumn Deschner. “On one hand we were back in person, but in general the amount of stuff we learned how to do online has shifted how we interact with school and work”

No one was alone in feeling isolated. According to Deschner, things have changed for the better since then, but it didn’t happen all at once.

“It was more of a slow burn,” said Deschner.

Senior Kian Bonvento also felt the difficulty of the shift.

“It was horrible, I was already not a talkative kid, and to be thrust back in while also wearing a mask, I really just did not like it.”

“Classes weren’t bad, neither were the teachers. It was just getting back to knowing people was hard,” said Bonvento.

For Bonvento, the shift was strange for not only him, but for all of us seniors whose high school years were completely shifted as a result of shutdowns.

Now, seemingly for everyone, being a senior and experiencing life similar to how it was before 2020 feels good. Not to say things are the same, things are very different, but they are, in a way, better.