one of the biggest silver lining that I’ve found as a result of covid is a greater appreciation of in person school. i would’ve never thought I would take school of all things for granted before covid. I should mention that the only reason I passed any classes in my junior year in high school which was split in half due to covid was because the school said our grades couldn’t go down from where they were before the pandemic. that safety net wasn’t in place my senior year so I was the least bit enthusiastic when I learned we were doing online learning at the start and we didn’t even know if/when we could go back to some resemblance of in person learning. during this time, I’ve also grown to appreciate good teachers even more than before, the teachers at Decatur High worked the marrow out of their bones to help the students. even if I was doing a pathetic job of keeping up, I could see the effort they were putting into everything and i realized I was lucky to have such damn good teachers. although i think i forgot everything i learned that year…that’ll come back to bite me. a lot of the worries we had revolved around our grandmother who we recently moved into the house next door to ours. her along with my brother and mother are at increased risk to suffering from covid for reasons varying from smoking related lung problems to old age. the most frustrating thing by far was convincing my bother to get vaccinated. my dad is a very stubborn man. this is pretty normal, except both me and my brother have become equally if not more stubborn than him. it was hell,, trying to convince someone who was dating a self admitted conspiracy theory beelivers who got most of her ‘credible’ information from tik tok . the olympics in japan were also pretty lame since covid and japan’s execution of the disease  was kinda ruining the vibe.