The coronavirus pandemic has taken away our normal lives by keeping us in quarantine. However, a former student of our school transferred to online school her sophomore year in 2018 due to health issues.

She gave a deep insight on her life and what the effect the pandemic has on her schooling and life in general as well as advice to get us through this unprecedented time.

“Nothing is insanely different for me since the pandemic broke out. I’ve heard the whole ‘stay inside, wash your hands’ speech multiple times which was expected. School work has also just seemed to slow down a little but, but not much at all,” said Darcy Cronin, former student.

Schoolwork for Darcy has not changed drastically and neither has her life. She hardly goes anywhere except for therapy and the doctors, so this pandemic does not affect her life as much as it is affecting us students and faculty.

Because Darcy does not go anywhere, she has learned and adapted to an independent and isolated life.

“During my time of taking online school, I’ve discovered that you grow a lot of independence. If you have any highly prioritized activities, skills, or hobbies, you can work on those more independently as well as more in depth,” said Darcy.

In the situation we are in, there is no leaving the house unless it is necessary. So that means we have more time on our hands. As Darcy said, go more in depth with your hobbies and skills in order to help fight the boredom of quarantine.

Staying inside for a long period of time is driving many of us insane as we are not used to this way of living. But for Darcy, she has been through our same situation of isolation and has learned to deal with it.

“I believe I went insane after the first two days. Both days were amazing and I was super organized. But once day three hit, what felt like my normal routine just went out the door,” Darcy said.

Not only did Darcy experience this sudden switch, senior Aiden Bailey did as well.

“It was super cool the first few days, I had no distractions from friends and I had more accessibility as well. After the first few days however, I got less excited as everything started to become the new normal,” said Aiden.

Everything was going smoothly for the first few days, but everything started to go downhill once those first few days flew by.

This is when we started to transition into keeping our sanity in check as we jumped into something completely new. No one knew what to expect as we started to engage in remote learning, it was chaotic for a lot of us.

“Keeping my sanity has been a challenge if anything. It’s extremely hard to transition to being isolated and independent at such a quick pace. The one thing that has really kept me sane is self-care,” said Darcy.

All of us are trying to remain sane through this period of time and it can be difficult to keep your sanity in check because of how crazy life is right now. Self-care however, can help keep you sane and keep you healthy.

“There’s always something you can improve on to better yourself as a person and not only is it good for production, but it’s also a nice habit to get into,” Darcy said.

I know we have all dreamt of laying in bed scrolling through Instagram or Snapchat while in school, but once your dream becomes reality in quarantine, it isn’t all the great.

What can help this reality we originally thought we wanted but now we dont is getting into good habits of self care and keeping up with assignments. However the amount of assignments we are getting may be too overwhelming.

“Remote learning has not been a bad experience for me, but the amount of homework I receive is too much,” said junior Michael Kane.

Being in an online class may not be bad, but once homework starts to pile up, that’s when we start to get overwhelmed as Michael said. Luckily school is only until 12:15 so we have all day to finish assignments, not to mention the three day weekends we get as well to get assignments in.

Once you get assignments done, dive deeper into your hobbies and skills. Remember to take care of yourself and to also take part in activities that interests you to help keep you sane. It may be hard, but we have made it so far already.

“Don’t give up. Put more time into things you are genuinely passionate about if you’re bored, if you are sitting around with nothing to do, try searching for things to do on google or any social media platform like Instagram or Pinterest. There are tons of ideas and interesting things to try out or look into. But overall, try to keep yourself grounded. There will be tough parts, but just believe in yourself,” Darcy said.