I never thought “the zoomies and the roomies” would be a thing now. I always put my faith in the fact that we’d never have to have school from home. In fact, I never even thought about it. Until the news of Covid started spreading through our heads. The first time I’d ever heard of it was from Emmet Palmer, who was parading through the sixth grade hallway shouting, “ah! I have COVID-19! We’re all going to die!” After that, I got sick from it, was sent home (to quarantine, but at that time we weren’t really familiar with the word), and upon my departure the school shut down. This past year (only fourteen more days until the one year FMS Quarantine Anniversary) I’ve gotten rather familiar with Zoom, Masks and especially hand sanitizer. Those first few weeks I suffered from dry hands because I was washing them all the time. Most of us got hooked to OneNote and started making fun notebooks to waste time on. But a lot of good things have come out of this travesty; we’ve picked up many new hobbies, learned to enjoy time with ourselves and nature, gotten a lot better at writing, painting, drawing, etc… And we’ve started to grow faster in our minds. Some parts of my brain are probably at the mental age of fifteen. When my dad was twelve he was running around in coveralls screaming, “who got the babbadook?!” and chucking boulders into his backyard lake. Well, as much as I strive to have as much fun as I can, to make sure my childhood is not wasted, there are also moments when I feel like sitting down with a bunch of royal queens and kings with tea and discussing the current crisis in lack of grains. I’ve started wearing dresses more often, acting dainty at dinnertime, and putting off going to the mall because I have homework. Now what kind of Mila does that!? Perhaps my brain is just preparing me for being a teenager, or at least, what part of a teenager should behave like. as a thirteen year old I am probably going to have some wacko moments, but you just have to accept that I can’t tuck away my personality like that forever. I am very excited when Quarantine finally moves to stage four and we can all skip off into the sunset and sing Hallelujah! But I am also grateful for the experience it has given me. Except I am not grateful for the fact that it stuck me in my home with my parents all the time. Before this, I would’ve never thought about Wicca, or rock painting, or fantasy genre writing, or lucid dreaming. Heck, I’ve even started a diary and kept at it! The other Mila would never have been able to fill her diary more than halfway. So ask yourself, what has quarantine done to you? How have you benefited from it? And how do you feel about it?