"I think the experiences and skills I developed during the pandemic and lockdowns were actually crucial to my success." For many people in March of 2020 after the Covid pandemic hit, they were displaced from work because their specific jobs required them to be in-person and they were no longer able to do so. For me specifically, being a 16 year old in high school, I was pretty distraught and confused how I would continue my education remotely, as all I had known my whole life was attending public school in-person and then doing certain assignments online, albeit the minority of assignments. After the pandemic, I had to quickly adjust along with many students with attending classes online, for the same duration that we did during the school day and also doing nearly all assignments online. At first, this change was pretty difficult for me. You know, I didn't think I had the attention span to be able to do an eight-to-three class schedule Monday through Friday remotely, and be able to give it the same attention to detail that I had usually done in class. However, working remotely was an important skill I developed through 2020 and 2021 during the lockdown periods. I had noticed, one day, that I was actually able to work in concentration for four hours at a time. This was something completely unusual for me. Now as classes have resumed in person for the most part and I am at university, I think the experiences and skills I developed during the pandemic and lockdowns were actually crucial to my success. Plenty of jobs are remote nowadays, as well as plenty of classes and classwork, and I think that learning how to maintain focus remotely is an important skill. So although the pandemic was certainly a stressful time, and certainly made us deviate away from the norm, it came with a lot of potential benefits and expansion and people skill sets, especially my own as it pertains to remote work.

“… it was basically a modified hide and seek.” Do you have any scars from doing an outdoor activity, like hiking or mountain biking? What happened?” Um, well I have one from, like – from my childhood. Um, I wasn’t doing anything cool like hiking or mountain biking, I was in middle school. And at my school, we would take these trips every fall, we would go to this camp out in, like, rural North Carolina and stay there for, like, half a week. They were always really fun, but we would play this game, usually every night, where we would – it was basically like a modified hide-and-go-seek, where the kids would hide, and we would try to reach a base, and the teachers would, uh, try to catch us, basically. And I remember, I was trying to get to the base, and I could see the base, but it was about, like, hundred, two hundred feet away or something. And I thought to myself, “The best way to get there would be to cut through this, like, concrete soccer field type of thing. It was, like, a small soccer field that was concrete, not grass. So I thought I was gonna do that. So, I started running just as fast as I could, trying to get through this, um – trying to get through this soccer field. And, it was really dark that night, they had, like, minimal lighting and I couldn’t really see where I was going. And I didn’t realize that there was, like, this wooden goalpost that was right at the level where my head was going to be as I ran through the soccer field. I didn’t see it until, like, probably one fourth of a second before I slammed into it and just, like, busted my head on this wooden board. And I flew into the soccer field. And, uh, yeah. It wasn’t great. It was not a pretty picture. So I feel really bad for the teacher who I eventually ran up to, screaming, and clutching my head, my forehead. Because I’m sure that – I’m sure that was somewhat scarring for that teacher, but, yeah. I, uh – they had to call an ambulance and take me to the hospital. My parents were really worried, they had to drive the hour-and-a-half over there to the hospital to see me. And they…