In March of 2020, St. George’s went entirely virtual. The school building closed, and teachers taught classes over Zoom.

Since then, so much has happened both in the world and in our school community.

When students returned in August 2020, everything was different. We went from all-virtual learning to having a portion of our students online and the others in masks at school, eating lunch outside and socially distancing in the halls. Markers on the floors indicated how far apart we needed to stand.

Now it’s December of the year afterward, and all of us are back on campus as “Zooming Ahead” reports. Masks are no longer mandatory, the dining hall is available as a lunch spot again, and teachers aren’t virtually broadcasting their classes to anyone. We’re back to our passions as “Getting Ready for Gameday” and “Breaking the Mold” suggest.

Even with the return to some of the aspects of pre-pandemic life, many things still feel different.

After going through a pandemic of this magnitude, it’s hard to go back. And why should we? The pandemic pushed people to focus on mental health more than before, and taking it seriously is even more of a priority now, as our feature story “Finding a Work Around” explains. We took the community around us for granted, never thinking that it would be ripped from us the way it was. We were separated from an environment that we never even realized was as beneficial to us as it had been.

If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s how to see what is really important: people. And if it was once normal to prioritize grades or attendance records over our connections to each other, it shouldn’t be that way anymore. We don’t need life to be the way it used to be.

Two years ago, everything was “normal.” But in the time since, the definition of the word has changed. We’ve all heard about the “new normal” in regards to life then versus now. We are living in the new normal right now, in the ways we behave around each other and the ways we perceive the world. Two years may feel short, but in the grand scheme of things, we have come so far.

It’s time we move forward with what we learned and grow together as a community. We can start by coming to terms with the present.

In the past two years, we lost so much, and we need to grieve that loss. Not only the losses of loved ones, but of experiences, a sense of community, precious moments on which we missed out, and the loss of any normalcy. We have gone through denial, isolation, anger and depression. Now we need to work on accepting it and moving on, not accepting it and trying to go back to the way things were in 2019. That’s the past, and we need to keep our eyes on the future.

Our old normal is dead and gone, and the new normal doesn’t need to be like that. Nobody is the same person they were before the pandemic, and that’s okay. There’s still so much uncertainty. That’s okay too. We’ve dealt with it before, and we’ll do it again.

WHAT’S AN EDITORIAL?
Editorials represent the opinion of the editorial board and do not necessarily reflect those of the Lodge staff or of the St. George’s community at large. The Lodge strives to be an open forum for the thoughtful and deliberate exchange of comment and criticism and therefore welcomes letters in response to the editorial. Responses will be printed in the opinion section of the newspaper, should not exceed 300 words and must be signed and accompanied by a verifiable email address. These letters will not be printed if the content is judged obscene, violates the privacy of others or encourages physical disruption of school activities.

The Editorial Board: Madeline Sisk, Alanna Murphy, Ellie Christie, Caroline Higley, Jack Seigerman and Lauren Shang.