As soon as I got my first trimester routine down and was hitting the ground running, they pulled me right back into my own personal isolation chamber, my bedroom. Cut off from the outside world and longing for human interaction again, I thought to myself “here we go again”. As soon as I heard from my 5th hour teacher that the student sitting behind me tested positive for COVID, my heart sank. This meant two weeks without hockey, in person school, or seeing my friends and family.

I was stuck in a limbo. I was angry, sad, confused, and overwhelmed while reliving my worst nightmare. I thought to myself “why do I have to suffer because someone else wasn’t careful enough?”, but I quickly realized that this mentality would not change the outcome or make me feel better. Honestly, it was very conflicting in quarantine because I considered not coming back to school at all. I figured that if I wanted to play hockey without worrying about getting sick or having to take two weeks off at a time by putting myself at risk, it would be worth it to continue distance learning 100% of the time. However, this type of learning is not beneficial to myself as well as many other students. The constant screen time and time management is almost impossible to control. Homework and a lack of communication quickly becomes overwhelming.

You know what they say: two steps forward, one step back. Although there may be struggles during this chaos, we are still going forward. I am glad that I was able to do my part to keep others healthy and not spread the virus. Please stay safe and spread the message to others so we can start worrying less about stepping backwards. It is on the shoulders of the whole CDH community to keep yourself and others smart and safe.