After such a long time, coming back to school was definitely weird, especially with so many rule changes and, most importantly, the schedule change. But what else is there to be surprised about in 2020?

Some have made decisions about students returning. It’s best to provide choices for all students, but they may not understand distance learning struggles for students and teachers. Not recognizing that all students learn differently and not allowing students to make the best choice for the learning is the real issue here, so perhaps it’s best not to impose perspectives on a situation without understanding it. Moving forward, none of us know any future possibilities, so it would be a waste of time to think about the “what ifs.”

We’ve all had our lives drastically change in months; we’ve learned to live a new life, a life full of surprises and changes. What’s not to love about change, right? Because change can be a good thing, it can bring new experiences like returning to school today, new opportunities such as a new way of life, and meeting new teachers. We can treat them like a potential enemy or as a new friend, but we have to trust that everything will be ok in the end.

What’s happened these past few months cannot be changed, and as I’ve written, we don’t know what the future holds. Why make us worry about the future and not think about today? Think about what’s happening right now. Right now, we need to have as few disruptions as we can. That makes sense.

A lot has happened since March, and although there are plenty of things that we can complain about and waste our time looking at how things could have been different, we’ve also gained a lot. We were given the time to spend time with our loved ones, reflect on ourselves, and fix mistakes. Time is precious. It can and should never be taken for granted.

My life has changed a great deal these past eight months. In the beginning, I wasted my time playing video games and on people who I once thought were friends. But upon reflection, I learned a lot about myself, I learned a lot about the people I had in my life, and I learned how to adapt to change. I made some bad calls, decided I was sufficient on my own, but I realized that we could not live life without balance. We cannot live life in the dark; life happens in the grey, full of love and hate. It is impossible to take one for another. 2020 hasn’t been a year that we will necessarily look back at and smile about, but it is a year that will remind us time after time to forget the past, value the present, and prepare for the future. Mistakes were made. We all make mistakes, but what happens after? Are you going to be the person that takes a do-over every time, or are you going to be the person that’s going to live with it and move forward?