Letter My Future Self

 Hi, future Alex, this is 16-year-old Alex who is finishing her last days of being a high school freshman. The year is 2020, and a lot of crazy stuff has happened. In the first few months of 2020, there had been a lot of news about an outbreak of coronavirus in China. Before we knew it, the coronavirus was spreading all over the world. At the beginning of March, things were getting worse and everyone started getting worried. The grocery stores started running out of toilet paper and a bunch of other supplies because people were scared. On March 12, the governor made an announcement that all Maryland schools would shut down for 2 weeks. At first, everyone was excited for school to be closed because we thought that things would blow over in a few weeks and we'd be back to normal. The weekend right after school got closed, I went to Arizona for spring break. Things weren't that bad yet, the airport still had a lot of people there and there weren't many people wearing masks. We landed during the afternoon, and later that night our aunt tells us that we have to get back on the plane in an hour because they were scared the airports might shut down, but they eventually decided that we would stay the night and figure it out from there. A day or two into the trip, all restaurants, shops, and bars were getting closed due to corona. The grocery stores were also empty so we had limited resources. We kept debating whether or not we should go home early, but we ended up staying for most of the trip since the mountains were still open to hiking. When we got back home, it was super weird and empty since everything was closed. The date that we would go back to school kept pushing back until they decided to close school for the rest of the year. At that point, we were all tired of being in quarantine and were upset that we wouldn't be going to school. We didn't get to say a proper goodbye to people since everything was so sudden. Our first high school lacrosse season got canceled and so did the rest of our sporting events. There were times where I hated quarantine and felt really bored because I couldn't go out to see people or play sports, but there were other times where I enjoyed it because I was being really productive and got a lot of things done around the house. The first two months were the easiest, but after that things started getting repetitive and were losing motivation the be productive with my days. Cyberschool became a struggle for me because I would procrastinate a lot, and it was hard to not have a teacher there in person to teach you the material. A month or two ago, there became a rule that you had to wear a mask in any public place and you must stay 6 feet apart from people at all times. Nothing like this had ever happened before, so it kinda felt like we were in a moving or something. It's currently June 4th and things are slowly starting to open back up, but you still have to wear masks. My club lacrosse team has been able to practice for the last few weeks, but we must stay 6 feet apart at all times which is weird. The whole year of 2020 has been insane, we started out with the year talking about a possible WW3, Trump's Impeachment, the coronavirus pandemic, and now the world is filled with black lives matter protests an riots because of the death of George Floyd. George Floyd was a 46-year-old black man who was killed by a policeman because he had a fake $20 bill. There are protests in every state in the US and in other countries. There are many places where there are riots and looting happening. The world is pretty crazy right now. Now with the protests, people are starting to forget about the corona. We went from not being to leave our homes to thousands of people joining together in the streets. I think that it's good that people are protesting because change needs to happen, but I hope that corona doesn't spread too much. No one really knows what's going to happen next. A lot of people say that school might be different next year because of the coronavirus. I hope that one day the coronavirus won't be a problem, but right now we just have to work with what we have. I don't really know what to expect for the summer, but I hope I'll be able to get my license and have a good time.