“The school will not be responsible for your death if you choose to go back,” said Martina’s mother. This message was heard in many homes in the last two years.

Have you ever prepared to walk into finish eighth grade and soon walk into high school? The feeling might be exciting, stressful, or scary, but how do you think it felt to do this, during a deadly worldwide pandemic, students can tell you the answer.

When COVID-19 first began nobody thought it would leave so many impacts the way it did. School’s shut down for months, businesses went out of business, fear of the virus was electric, and the economy moved very slow and weak.

It was March 2020 and students still had to finish school by May, only virtually this time.

“I remember feeling excited about virtual school, it meant there would be less school work, but then I started to feel curious of when school would be normal again,” said freshman Caiden Bean.

COVID -19 affected school all around, not just with change of a virus in the air.

“Freshman year feels the same as eighth grade as far as teaching, the only difference is the subjects,” said freshman Julianna Grado.

There were not many people here who didn’t feel the same.

“There was probably about not even half the school when I was here, so no one didn’t get to see everyone,” said junior Marlon Dant.

With all these negative changes, it created a big dark cloud over many of the students.

“I think now, people want to fight more than they have before because not seeing each other as much has had more of an effect on us then we realize,” said Grado.

There have been several negative effects in school but in a way, there was hope.

“I think there is still time for all of this pandemic to be over with so I think we can still have a good high school experience,” said junior Rachel Prate.

Things did change, and it helped the school become better. A year later, school rules began to change, and everything started to feel back to normal.

“I think it’s good that we began to bring things more back to normal as in not limiting the amount of people in the lunchroom or the space in a classroom, it’s better this way,” said sophomore Diesel Nava.

“Even our virtual skills helped with this year as well. Now that teacher and students know how to operate with school online, if a student or teacher is absent, we are prepared and know how to handle everything just fine,” said sophomore Mariah Clemens.

This made students realize they can’t take high school for granted.

“Now we realize that school is more fun than you think; and we only have a limited of time before it’s over,” said sophomore Luke Meredith.