After attending a few graduation parties, my friend and I were driving home when she asked me a question she saw on Twitter; if you could go back to January 1, 2020 and live life normally, would you? Ever since she asked, the question has sat in the back of my mind.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused me to learn a lot of things quickly. It has taught me to appreciate living in the moment and cherish the relationships I have. I have learned some time-management and leadership skills. Without the quarantine that COVID-19 caused it would have taken me a lot longer to learn these things I now know.

My friends and I are closer then we were prior to quarantine. We have a shared life experience that everyone went though, we have all felt the same feelings caused by isolation. Yet we found ways to talk with each other and still spend time with each other, and therefore have strengthened our bonds to each other.  We did things like group FaceTime calls and car circles where we talked about anything and everything rather than text every now and then.

I think COVID-19 has strengthened my generation overall, and gave us more confidence in the future.  We have started making changes to our world ourselves instead of relying on the older generations to do it. We have learned how to fight for things we believe in rather than wait for someone else to do it.

It sucks that I could not have a Junior prom or a final show for this show choir season. It sucks that I may not get a normal senior year with Homecoming week, show choir, band and every other thing that goes with my last year of high school but I know now that everything that I do get, I will appreciate more than I would have before.

So to answer the question. No I would not go back. I would not change how my life has gone since the start of this year. It has made me a better person with stronger relationships. I am more versed on living as a part of society than just watching it. My generation now has the confidence to shape the world into how we think it should be. COVID-19 is a horrible thing that will be written into history books for the future but it made those of us who lived through it better people and changing that would be wrong.