By Claire Fagan, Features Editor
A two-month long summer—two months of bliss—has ended. Despite being back in school, students are still feeling the effects of the calm summer and using their experiences during June, July, and August to inform their decisions for the future.
Until mid-2022, the United States seemed to be caught in a loop of cases rising and dropping, peaks and valleys that never seemed to end. The summer was the first long stretch in over two years where cases did not peak enough for the government to shut down businesses or require masks in all buildings. “Over the summer, things got more normal. I got a job, we got to travel and all that stuff, so it kind of put me in a more normal mindset similar to the one I had before COVID began,” senior Marley Cosgrove notes.
The summer was a well-deserved rest for River Hill students, and it was nice not to be preoccupied with COVID-19 every waking moment. Junior Shirley Zhang agrees that the refreshing summer changed her perspective. She comments, “The summer really took away from concerns of the pandemic because a lot of people went on vacation and it was a time to relax.”
However, despite improvements in cases, the country is still not technically at a zero level. Because of this, some students are still worried about COVID-19. Junior Smera Singh continues to take precautions such as wearing a mask in school because she is worried about contracting the virus, but she does agree that her worry about COVID-19 has decreased since the spring. She remarks, “I think it’s still as big of an issue, mostly because a lot of the cases seem to have not gone down, and sometimes there’ll be a spike.” Shirley feels secure returning to school, but she still harbors some concern for a complete return to normal. She stated, “I’m fifty-fifty on [the risk], because on the one hand I believe the general trend of cases is going down, but on the other hand there are still cases happening in Maryland and the US every single day… what that will result to, I can’t really say.” Shirley still wears a mask because it’s “a sense of comfort,” but she doesn’t know how effective it is while she is surrounded by a largely unmasked student body.
Concern over getting COVID-19 has significantly decreased over the past year. However, COVID-19 cases are still present and are a factor to consider, especially if a person or their family is more susceptible to disease. Marley commented, “If there were to be an outbreak then I would definitely start to take more precautions again. But as it is now, I feel like we’re kind of on the downward sloping end of it.” Marley no longer masks up, but in the event of a spike in cases she is willing and likely to wear one again.
As we near two and a half years into the pandemic, it is possible that we may never again reach complete normalcy. However, as school begins, we seem to have reached a safer, less anxious stage of the pandemic. More and more people are returning to their ordinary lives, and students are unmasking more often than not. As Smera says, “Maybe this is a step that people need to take in order to have a better school experience.”