I was a sophomore in high school when COVID first hit. Now I'm going to be a senior, I'm going to graduate soon and go off to college. It was so far away and now it's already happening. At first I thought that COVID wouldn't last that long. I was enjoying my time at home. I did all my school work in an hour, I read books outside on top of every small ledge I could find. I learned 30 minute long dances from YouTube, I painted, I exercised, I was on top of the world. When I got the notification that school would be online for the rest of the year I was overjoyed. I was never going to pass chemistry if we went back in person. But my mom started working from home, and my dad had weirdly long breaks from work. It was nothing we couldn't handle. I just didn't enjoy being around my parents that much. I did miss my friends, in the beginning we made group chats and stayed up late playing cards against humanity online together, we played among us. But then those calls became less frequent and I would talk to my friends less and less every day. When summer came I was bored. I know that isn't anything stupendous but I'm telling the truth. I finally got into therapy that summer and it didn't really help but I was ok, just bored. Because of COVID our spring school musical was postponed, during the summer we were allowed to practice and perform. We had long days learning choreography for West Side Story! It was amazing, I finally had social interaction with my friends again, we got prepared and finally the first night of the show was here. We were filming it since we weren't allowed in the audience. It went horribly, dances were wrong, audio started in strange places, cues were missed, and Tony's blood packet popped a scene too early. Luckily we had more performances that we could get right. I woke up the next morning and I found out that someone in our cast (that all of us had been away from for more than 2 weeks) had tested positive for COVID. To say that I was devastated would be an understatement, but I held it in until that night. I had the worst panic attack that I've ever had. I could barely breathe and I couldn't control my limbs. My mom got so worried, she made me talk to my therapist about it. I am ok, my mom just gets worried sometimes. After that I got out alot more with my friends and I was getting more and more worried about junior year. I was scared of my classes to be specific. I was taking 4 college classes, yeah 4. The beginning of the school year went better than expected. AP Physics was hard but that was just because the class is hard in general. We were back to learning in person with extra safety precautions. There were 6 lunches now instead of 4, we could only walk one way in the hallways, we had to wash off our desks after every bell and, we had staggered release from every bell, freshman and seniors, then juniors and sophomores. All in all it wasn't bad but now I had to go through an obstacle course to get to my classes. November 19th 2 days after my birthday My family and I are out for my birthday dinner, I just turned 17. And we get the call. All classes will be online but after school activities may continue as scheduled. This time the classes had times. Starting at 7:45 am we had to be on a zoom call with every one of our classes every day for attendance. In most of my classes I was the only one with my face cam on. During this time we were putting on A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. I was playing Starveling, one of the Mechanicals. We were rehearsing after school almost every day in order to get ready for our performance early January. School went back to in person around January 15th with new rules for being contact traced, the students had to go to school but could not do after school activities. During hell week for the show, one of my friends, Jack, got contact traced. He was irreplaceable. We had to push back the show until he got back. The next time I as well as a bunch of other cast members got contact traced. So we pushed the show back again. By this point our director had everyone in the show be replaceable except Jack and one other person, Aidan. The show approaches and Aidan gets contract traced. As they say, the third time's the charm. We had our show the next weekend and everything went as smoothly as it could under the circumstances. Our spring musical was Godspell, I was Peggy. By this time vaccines were being given out to people 16 or older. Only 2 people in our cast were younger than 16 at this time and most of us were trying to get the vaccine. When the show rolled around one 2 people in our 14 person cast were fully vaccinated. Luckily those two happened to be Jesus and Judas. Everything worked out fine, well as fine as anything can work out. Now I am fully vaccinated, I am the Historian of our school's thespian branch. I am writing this at 2 am and I am stressed about the year to come.

'To be or not to be'. One of Shakespeare's most famous quotes said by the character Hamlet. Although interpreted in many different ways, Hamlet said this at the start of his speech in which he contemplates life or death. Hamlet says that death would be much like sleeping. The only fear is that we might have bad dreams when we're dead however we would escape petty things like emotion. Regardless of Hamlet's reasoning, much like with most things, here are two sides of the coin. Some might say that emotion is a hindrance to our humanity but others might say that emotions are what ties us to it. Humanity is one of the most complex, ever-changing creatures to reside on this Earth so far and because of our forever changing nature we can be happy but also horribly sad, we can be positively kind but also unquestionably volatile. To be human is like a pendulum swinging from left to right. Our weight or fixed point is that we all collectively share the attribute of actually being a human. When we swing left, we're less kind, harsher and more unhappy. When we swing right, we're conscious of ourselves and others, we hold more joy or gratitude and even satisfaction. Without a doubt, emotions can prove our humanity. Some people show their emotions upfront and to the world, however, others can struggle with emotions whether they are their own or if they belong to someone else. This means that emotion isn't something that can define humanity completely. Charles Darwin was an expert in natural history also known as a naturalist and he believed humans were more alike to animals however we are just higher in intelligence. TO BE CONTINUED