Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many students were able to grow as individuals into better people and learn from their new experiences by reflecting on themselves throughout quarantine.
Sophomore Hampton Ramos spent her first year of high school online.
Ramos started finding her own sense of style and figured out who she really was.
“I think that over quarantine in general, just being by myself and relying so much on social media, I definitely grew as a person and I started seeing different perspectives,” Ramos said.
Ramos is thankful for her period of reinvention as she believes she wouldn’t have been herself during freshman year in person.
During quarantine, senior Aliyah James decided she wanted to eat better by eating full meals in the morning so that she could have an appetite when lunch came, and wouldn’t be snacking all the time.
James says that quarantine gave her a lot of time to self-reflect and think about things like her mental health and how she could make it better.
“I feel like I’m more consistent than I was,” James said, “I don’t blank out on things anymore.”
James feels as if she’s way better at saying no than before the pandemic.
“I wanted everybody to like me and I was a people pleaser, but with some help I learned that you can’t please everybody and not at the expense of my own happiness,” James said.
A big outlet for Ramos was social media.
“On Tik-Tok I have a bunch of followers I don’t even know, but it’s nice having people that don’t know you and they just like you for who you are and you’re not afraid of embarrassing yourself,” Ramos said.
Ramos met and connected with a lot of new people as it was the only human connection she had at the time.
With remote learning, Ramos got to stay in her house wearing sweatpants all day doing school whenever she wanted to.
“I didn’t have to go through a schedule every day,” Ramos said.
James also felt as if she had more rest time while learning online.
James is very proud of herself for getting through quarantine as junior year was the hardest year for her.
“Especially with [junior year] being online, I had a bunch of classes that I didn’t really understand,” James said.
James vowed to not push her senior self as hard as she pushed her junior self.
Ramos has always been hard on herself too and is also proud of getting through quarantine.
“Last year it was hard being away from people and some relationships were interesting, but I think I’m proud of dealing with that,” Ramos said.
While at home, Ramos saw drawing as therapeutic and fun.
“I had art classes online so a lot of my time I would spend drawing stuff,” Ramos said.