This week is the four-year anniversary of the COVID-19 lockdown in Georgia. Over the past four years there were recorded 2,343,807 COVID cases in the state, and overall, 42, 351 deaths. Fayette county reported 23, 119 cases and 384 deaths. The United States saw a 6.2 percent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) decrease, and due to the economic effects of the lockdown,  more people fell under the poverty line from 42 percent to 46.6 percent. There was a large increase in unemployment due to temporary or permanent losses of jobs and more than 350,000 people were eligible for government aid.

– According to USA Facts

• “Me personally, I think I have recovered from everything.”
• “The socialization and the amount of work that is online now, I’ve had online math classes where if it wasn’t for the fact I had a drawing tablet, I wouldn’t have been able to show my work on my math sheets. I had online Spanish and that grew me a hatred for learning the language because I just couldn’t understand what the teacher was saying, I already sort of knew it due to how I was raised but I just couldn’t put together what the teacher was saying. In English the online books to read because we couldn’t touch the physical books, and in my engineering class, I had to do everything from a tiny Chromebook because I couldn’t use a personal computer.”
• “I think students are still recovering from being handed everything by people older than them. For example, at the time, students from the ages of 10-16, are expecting adults to hand them things, and they also do not want to work for what they want.”
• “I feel like we are still recovering from what we lost in the pandemic. School dances, graduations, I’ve heard a lot of people in my grade say they feel no closure from middle school.”
• “I really think it’s PTSD from it all. Like for me, there are times where I’m like scared to cough or scared to cough too loud or too much.”
• “I don’t think I ever really gained back my work ethic. Being able to put off assignments and lessons whenever I wanted to practically permanently changed my mindset to do work. It blew my already encroaching procrastination way up and I still haven’t broken it down.”
• “I think we are still learning how to socialize because I do believe we as a society have fallen back on how to be respectful and talk to each other.”
• “Apathy. The high schoolers currently are the ages when covid shut them down in middle school. I genuinely believe that middle school is some of the most formative years and without the human interaction we need, they don’t comprehend reality. They don’t feel as much as older teenagers and young adults feel because they didn’t have a great formative middle school experience. I think they just don’t realize how real the world is and that they need to pass classes in order to get out of high school and move on with their lives.”
• “I think a lot of students still haven’t gotten completely normal when it comes to socializing with others.”

It was the seventh grade, and my thoughts remained fairly positive throughout. What started as a two-week break from school turned into no school at all, which I found pretty awesome.

I never took it too seriously, as I wasn’t personally affected too badly. We even moved to Trilith Studios. In the middle of it all, my mom had my little sister, and I wasn’t allowed in the hospital, and my step-dad was never allowed to leave.

Emotionally, I felt pretty great, except for occasional school stress due to failures. Other than that, I had a ton of fun with friends, and it was probably the best era for me until now. Game pigeon, Roblox and Facetime probably got most of us through it.

If there was something I could re-do, I would have said goodbye to the class since I moved and never saw any of them again, except for my still-best-friend Chey.

Some things have completely altered, like delivery services for food and groceries (my family uses them all the time now), which were unheard of before. Many other aspects to our way of life have undoubtedly changed as well.

I was in 7th grade. I was happy about school closing because I was getting ready to move to California, so virtual school made preparing to move easier and I already told my friends goodbye.

I knew very little about the coronavirus. I knew that it was killing people, but that’s all I really took from it at the time. As time went on and we stayed in lockdown, I remember feeling depressed towards the tail end of it because I was in California and my first experience in a brand new school was virtual. I didn’t know anyone and the few interactions I did have were with strangers behind a computer screen.

I don’t feel like my education was greatly impacted from the school closure, but I do remember that communicating with others was hard for me. I would even say that now, four years later, communicating with others just isn’t the same as it was before. I think that the way we interact with each other has been compromised.

Lockdown really sucked. I consider myself someone who enjoys time to myself, but too much of anything can become bad for you.

I was in eighth grade. I was confused the Thursday when my art teacher was handing us our art a day early, she was just saying “We might not be at school on Friday and so we should take our art home just in case.” Once Covid started getting covered on the news, my literacy teacher wouldn’t play CNN10 at the beginning of class, but I just thought we were over that bit.

I knew nothing. I had heard of outbreaks in China before Christmas break, then once it got more spread out we stopped hearing anything about it, kind of like the teachers where trying to hide it from us, and CNN 10 had gotten blocked on school wifi too. I wasn’t too concerned by the school closure, it meant more time for me to be home and not have to socialize.

My teachers never stopped giving school work, my math teacher had already given us work for over the break, so she was one of the first to start giving out slideshows and trying to adapt to it, my English and Science teachers let my grade stay as is in their classes, didn’t give out any more work. My history teacher gave her slide shows out too but also made us do online quizzes but never any tests. My math improved mostly, my socialization was already in the gutter due to having moved schools the year prior (I swapped to a middle school that my elementary school wasn’t going to) and my reading had deteriorated even more.

The socialization and the amount of work that is online now, I’ve had online math classes where if it wasn’t for the fact I had a drawing tablet, I wouldn’t have been able to show my work on my math sheets. I had online Spanish and that grew me a hatred for learning the language because I just couldn’t understand what the teacher was saying, I already sort of knew it due to how I was raised but I just couldn’t put together what the teacher was saying. In English the online books to read because we couldn’t touch the physical books, and in my engineering class, I had to do everything from a tiny Chromebook because I couldn’t use a personal computer.

I was in 7th grade.  I had a lot of mixed feelings. At first I was excited to know that we would not have to do school work in person for the rest of the school year. However, I was worried that this would be a bigger problem that would affect everyone globally.

All I knew was that there were little cases here and there in America. It was spreading pretty fast.

I had just moved to Jersey from New York; it felt really lonely because I had just moved to a town where I really didn’t know anyone.

As time went on during the lockdown, it felt like things were just getting worse. Pertaining to academics, I don’t think that the lock-down had a big effect. When it comes to socialization, there were a lot of changes that happened. I began to be more closed off and have a hard time keeping a conversation with others. Before the lock down I was already somewhat anti-social, during the two months of school closure it only got amplified.

I was in 8th grade. I was excited to start summer break early. I knew that the “coronavirus” wasn’t the main reason people were dying. Initial I was happy to have a long break. But after lockdown went on, I was becoming more anti-social.

The two months of school closure had a huge impact on my socialization capacity. The only socializing I had was with my mother, and two younger brothers. I became increasingly anti-social. I felt like I had zero friends.

I think students are still recovering from being handed everything by people older than them. For example, at the time, students from the ages of 10-16 are expecting adults to hand them things, and they also do not want to work for what they want.