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. 

 

My memory from back then is a haze, we had no problems transitioning into covid as a family. we socially distanced from our grandmother; hardly went in her house and when we did we wore masks. the only detail I remember is the chaos that ensued over toilet paper. we were blessed that my family did not suffer any tragic losses due to covid despite several of our relatives being nurses on the front lines. I don’t remember any vivid details about the stark differences of our lives around the beginning of covid but my high school began to take action and moved all of our classes online. my mom began to make masks by hand and before you knew it, the next few months sank into monotony. since i am a loser who doesn’t even learn from his mistakes, I am about to pull an all nighter just to get a rough draft finished. if you can imagine someone with the work ethic of a panda combined with the attention span of a squirrel in a playground of a work environment, you’ll get a pretty accurate picture of my productivity during online learning. work piled up like a landfill and I found myself swamped by 2 weeks worth of overdue homework just from math. Don’t get me started on essays. 

I honestly don’t remember what was happening when i first heard about covid. I must’ve been under some disillusion that it wasn’t a bid deal. although i can’t see myself thinking that, i probably understood it was going to get worse but figured people would exercise their brain cells to get our lives back to normal. that last part was definitely disillusional, after what we’ve been through, I’m starting to believe the world (actually just America) is experiencing a collective loss of intelligence. maybe I’m becoming a cynic, but i can’t help but plant my hand into my face as I’m trying to knock sense into people but still trying to bear the pain for them. even if i think they’re absolute idiots, It would be a little bit more than rude to smack someone hard enough to get any worthwhile sense knocked into them. I guess i just can’t comment on late 2019 and early 2020, when i try to think back, it’s all just a blur. I guess i was too busy either getting distracted from working or trying to work and losing motivation as soon as i looked at how much i had to do to pay close attention what was going on in the news. i do remember when my mother decided to start making masks by hand, I took the pandemic seriously when i went outside but i guess i was still stuck in my bubble when it came to the developments in the pandemic. 

Hey everyone, my name is Gabriel Jacob I was born and raised about half an hour away in Decatur and this is my first semester at perimeter. My hobbies include camping, video games and graphic design, although I suck at the latter two. I really don’t have a single music preference but I prefer upbeat, bass heavy and fast-paced music so my Spotify playlist is predominantly rap and edm. I also throw in some other random genres like sea shanties, pop songs from the 2000s and classic rock. I will happily accept music suggestions if it helps me expand my horizons. I don’t follow sports religiously but I’ll root for UGA football and Atlanta Braves baseball. lastly, I have ADHD so if I happen to become a class clown out of the blue, that’s probably because I ran out of meds that day. I love self deprecating humor so you don’t need to get caught off guard when I roast myself. If there’s anything you can’t do, I’ll do it worse. 

My major is Computer science and then I’d like to transfer to GA State (as opposed to perimeter) where I would major in Graphic design. My goal is to find a field where I can utilize both of these majors like video game or web design. Computer science is a really profitable career but the last thing I want is a 9-5 cubicle job, I absolutely cannot work in a job that I don’t enjoy and I don’t enjoy working in a boring or cramped environment. I suppose that’s kind of contradictory given I’m easily distracted but I’ve never had problems actually doing homework for a class I enjoyed. no offense. If all else fails, I would still enjoy working outdoors so I could become a park ranger, nature conservationist or something along those lines. Speaking of outdoors, If anyone is tryna go camping, I can make a mean Dutch oven pizza and I practice the art of golden brown s’mores. I ain’t supplying gear though.