Over three years ago, the World Health Organization declared the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency. Masks disappeared, everything reopened, and conversations about the pandemic faded. In recent months, the COVID conversation has returned to the political sphere. The current administration claims that instituting lockdowns did the most damage to our country, despite the virus killing over a million Americans. The contradicting memories of the pandemic beg the question: Have we really moved on from this life-changing event?
I spent this summer working as a teaching assistant at an academic summer camp. Some of my time was spent talking to students about applying to college. I received a lot of questions about how I chose my major, how I knew what school was right for me, and what I wrote my personal statement about. My students are encouraged by their teachers to reflect on their most meaningful experiences, but are advised against writing about the most defining experience of their adolescence: COVID-19. Hearing this made me remember my own senior year of high school, and how I was also discouraged from writing anything related to the pandemic.
The reasoning for high school students now is straightforward, the same way it was for me. Everyone experienced the pandemic, so it will become a generic writing topic to the college board. Sure, everyone experienced the pandemic, but not everyone had the same experience. Some people lost family members in the early months, some missed graduations and class trips, and some developed long lasting mental/physical health challenges. These conversations with my students made me wonder if we are being too dismissive of an event that changed a generation.
Our society has seemed to be very eager to move on from the pandemic. Schools and other institutions reopened as soon as they could, people stopped wearing masks, those social distancing stickers disappeared, etc. There seems to be a mass trauma reaction from our community, where the mental scar of being locked inside for two years is making us want to move on as quickly as possible.
However, we are starting to see the more long-term effects on age groups that lost formative schooling years to online learning. Chronic absenteeism has increased dramatically, students are not progressing normally in math or reading, and the consequence on our social skills remains to be seen.
Even though our society is eager to move on, we cannot continue to collectively ignore the impact of a once in a generation event. Encouraging students not to write about COVID is just one example of how we are forcing ourselves to go back to normal without fully processing the event. Without encouraging true reflection of how the pandemic changed us, we may never fully understand its impact or truly move past it.