Leticia Desouza
Staff Writer
The recent pandemic hit the SLA community in many different ways. During those times, to keep ourselves and those around us safe, students needed to stay home and isolate ourselves from the outside world. With this free time, people chose many pathways where they could kill time. One of the many ways people around the world chose to kill time was with technology.
This was especially true for the Class of 2024, who started their high school experience entirely online. Whereas other grades at SLA had a chance to meet in person before being forced online, last year’s freshmen only had online interactions to connect.
Sophomore Eric Perez — connected with many people with activities like zoom calls and online games.
“I think that’s what made it fun, I’d stay up all night with friends and play video games. There was a lot of time for that which made me feel closer to friends.” Stated Perez
It seems that the freedom people across the world have with the internet allowed them to be less lonely during the cruciating moments of the pandemic.
“My relationship with most of the people I met online didn’t last long. If it did last, it was because we had something to connect with,” continued Perez. “For example, we both had the same interests or they were really funny.”
While some students had many experiences with the broad platforms in technology, other students mentioned their experiences during their time in online school.
Sophomore Shuhd Abdalla and Sophomore Auris Espinal shared some of their experiences with trying to build connections with other students at SLA during their online freshman year.
“It was a lot harder to make friends. I was really excited to make new friends but the pandemic has really made it difficult. Especially since everyone on zoom was over the pandemic at that point and sad about schooling being online that no one really tried to make lots of friends and stayed in a tight friend group.” Abdalla explained.
“I didn’t really get to connect with people mainly because I didn’t know anybody and they didn’t know me. When online classes first started I was very excited because I would get to see and talk to other students that were my age.” stated Espinal.
For all these reasons, Sophomores seemed to have difficulty creating a bond with their classmates. This made their experiences with the recent pandemic feel lonely.
After a while, things began to go back to normal after spending almost two years in quarantine. People began going back to their normal routines like going to work or school. This made many interactions and friendships made during the quarantine period start to fade.
“Sometimes I saw how we got distant from each other, but it never really bothered me. If there was a bad change, then I would simply block them.” Added Perez.
With the diversity of the sophomore SLA community, there are many other experiences recent 10th graders were able to experience during their time in the recent quarantine. Though with time only moving forward and with technology improving each day, online connections will only continue to grow. The recent pandemic allowed many people across the world to explore a world that they weren’t familiar with, allowing them to wonder and discover what is more to this unfamiliar world.
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