by Alexis Paradiso

The year 2020 has had many events that have changed my life. The most important one has to be the Covid-19 pandemic. Covid-19 had an impact on every country and every person.  It has kept us in the house and afraid to go outside and be infected. Our schools have changed the way they teach and there will be changes that will most likely be permanent. Family events and vacations were canceled with no end in sight of when things can be planned. What we considered a normal day was not normal anymore. 

The first reason that this event was important is that it has kept us inside and the world shut down. Many countries were in quarantine and we feared to go outside thinking that we may catch the virus. We started doing more online shopping since we couldn’t go to stores, and most of them were shut down for months. We were also not used to spending every single minute of the day with our families. Sometimes this was good, but other times it was too much and we would get on each other’s nerves. We also only saw our friends through facetime on the phone or our laptops. Staying in the house made me very upset that I couldn’t do simple things like meeting my friends at the park.  

Additionally, Covid-19 changed the way we do school. We do online classes from our homes now, instead of going to school. At first, I thought it was great, but then I realized that I do miss being with my friends at school. From now on, for snow days we won’t have the excitement of being off because now we can work from home. It is much harder to learn at home because I feel like I’m teaching myself.  

Lastly, all of our vacation and family plans have been canceled. We were supposed to go to Disney World in May and that had to be canceled. We are not sure when we are rescheduling it. My family also did a lot of overnight trips and we did not do anything at all this summer. Family events like my cousin’s wedding had to be canceled.  

The Covid-19 disease has changed so many things in my life. We had a “new normal” day from what we used to have. Staying inside, doing school from my room, and not being able to be with friends has been hard. It’s amazing how one disease can change a whole world and can affect so many things going on in your life. It definitely was the most important event in 2020 that changed my life.