The Trends That Got Us Through Covid
“We overcame so many obstacles. We got used to missing things like birthday celebrations, bus rides, and whispered jokes in the back of class. We learned to hold onto what we could, a message in the chat, a laugh in the breakout rooms, a funny Tik Tok shared at the right moments.”
When the world shut down in 2020, our world changed. School desks turned into beds, classrooms became glitchy Zoom calls, and we were introduced to the online platform of Google Classroom, a resource that has since changed the way of learning. Life as we knew it felt paused, but amidst the isolation something unexpected happened: we started connecting in new ways - through screens, through trends, through shared experiences that made us feel a little more human.
I still remember eighth grade like it was yesterday. Seventh grade had wrapped up, and the pandemic was still going on, and Governor Cuomo was giving press conferences, and in person opportunities were being offered to students. While I loved the simplicity of online classes and its comfortability I missed the routine of attending school in all aspects. My friends and I jumped at the chance to go back in person, even with all the ridiculous rules. We just needed to end off our year with a bang.
I can still hear my teacher, Ms. G, yelling across the room: “ Put on your visors!” And there I was trying to eat lunch with a piece of plastic annoyingly pecking at me in a cramped classroom. “Guys wrap up lunch we have to join zoom with the online students,” she said. I let out a sigh; I had one foot in school and the other in the digital world. It was confusing, it was frustrating, but we adapted. We had to.
And during all of that, Tik Tok became our pressure valve. I'll never forget the sound: “Bored in the house and I'm in the house bored.” It was funny and catchy, but it was also true. We were all just a little unhinged — dancing in pajamas at 2am, whipping coffee until our hands would numb up, and eating those giant fruit-filled natural cereal bowls like it was a gourmet breakfast. The “don't rush” challenge was in full swing — my older sister put on a full glam of makeup just to pass a makeup brush on the camera. She became consistent on social media like it was her job, and she even started a youtube channel which is deleted now. But you get the point: she now watches the archives of them just to self reflect on her younger self.
Acting weird wasn't just accepted, it was expected. We weren't alone in losing it; we were losing it together.
Strangely enough, the screens did not separate us; instead, they stitched us together. I started talking more with classmates I barely noticed before. Everyone was vulnerable, little siblings in the background, microphone being choppy, and somehow, that made us more real. There was a quiet kind of unity in our shared awkwardness. We were survivors of the same storm.
Looking back, I realize those chaotic days and hybrid days taught me more than any Zoom lecture ever could. I learned how to be flexible, how to find comfort in discomfort, and how to laugh through the glitches, both on screen and in life. The pandemic didn’t disrupt my education, it refined it. It made me resilient.
What I didn’t fully understand at the time was that the chaos of remote learning was quietly shaping me. There was no guidebook for quietly waking up five minutes before every Zoom class or submitting assignments while the Wi-Fi blinked out. It was more of a yell from my mother to join my classes and to stay awake because “I shouldn’t have stayed up the whole night knowing I had school the next day.”
I had to figure out how to stay focused in a room that evolved as a bedroom, classroom, and a lunch spot. I wasn’t always on top of my assignments. I wasn’t always the ideal student I strived to be. I procrastinate, get overwhelmed, forget deadlines. But somehow I kept going. Without the usual structure of school, I had to build my own. That process taught me how to be accountable for myself. I learned that motivation doesn’t always show up when you need it, but discipline can. Most importantly, I learned that even when everything around me felt unpredictable, I could still find a way to move forward.
What stayed with me most wasn’t just the lessons or deadlines; it was the feeling that we all opened up more. The silence of those early morning Zoom calls, the flicker of tired eyes behind a screen, as if the light was dimming. But yet we shined as bright and radiant as ever. We overcame so many obstacles. We got used to missing things like birthday celebrations, bus rides, and whispered jokes in the back of class. We learned to hold onto what we could, a message in the chat, a laugh in the breakout rooms, a funny Tik Tok shared at the right moments. Slowly the digital world became a lifeline. When the world started to open back up, I realized I wasn’t the same. School didn’t feel as separate as life anymore. It strangely became a part of how I coped, how I connected and how I kept going to achieve my future career goals. The glow of a laptop or iPad screen still feels like a strange kind of comfort, not because it replaced “real life,” but because it carried us through the part where it felt like real life was too heavy to hold alone.
Even now, years later, I still rely on Google Classroom like a second brain. Assignments, feedback, deadlines — it's all there, like a ghost of the pandemic that stuck around. We didn't just learn online; we became online. That year blurred the line between school and screen, and we've never fully gone back.