Last updated on June 5, 2020
The end of this school year has been very hard across our whole country, due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The Northwest School community hasn’t been all together in one room or building since the beginning of March. There is much uncertainty about when we can all come together again as a community. Seniors have faced a unique set of challenges due to this outbreak, missing senior spring, graduation, and the possibility of online classes for their first semester of college.
It has now been over 100 days since Washington’s first confirmed case of the Coronavirus, and since then our life has been upended. Businesses were shut down, schools were closed, and people were asked to stay home as much as possible, and practice social distancing. Now after weeks of officials gradually putting in stricter social distancing rules, the state government has finally started to share plans for these restrictions. The only solid action plan we have gotten from Governor Jay Inslee the “4 phases plan.” This plan is for our state to open in four phases so that businesses do not open all at once, causing a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Each of these four phases will have at least three weeks between one another, so officials can evaluate if our practices as a state have paid off or not (meaning the deaths will decrease). In the first phase (the stage we are in now) we are asked to stay home and social distance. In the second phase, we will still be asked to stay home with a little bit of social interaction allowed (in groups of five people or less.) The third phase is when we can start to really interact again socially, where gathering with less than fifty people is allowed. The fourth phase is when we can start to attend large gatherings of more than fifty people, and slowly return to the way of life as we knew it prior to the pandemic.
As a freshman in high school I am scared. I am scared that I won’t be able to experience the thrill of high school I have been waiting for ever since I was little. The uncertainty alarms me the most, not knowing when this roller-coaster is going to be over and how it might impact the way I look back on my high school experience in the future. Knowing that the Northwest community won’t be able to come together again until phase four is very troubling to me.
Social distancing has been challenging for me because of how much I appreciate socializing with my friends and meeting new people. This has left me feeling isolated with my family. Even though there is still uncertainty of what is going to happen next fall, I have hopes that we will all be able to come together again.
The past 100 days has been hard for students to adapt. Changing to remote learning has posed challenges, and it’s been hard to get a solid structure and schedule into place. Looking into the next 100 days I have hopes that we can slowly start to come together again as a community.
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