This year, for the most part, was an absolute disaster for most of the world. Almost everything shut down and we were told to stay inside as much as we possibly could. For me personally, this year was different from what I was used to. I didn’t get to see my friends daily, I didn’t get to see my teachers everyday, I didn’t get to go practice sports, and I mostly sat at home. I would either be eating, playing games, sleeping, or watching something. I was never really active during covid. To be honest, I don’t know many people who were until things started getting better and life started to return to normalcy.

This past year, I felt like I didn’t learn or do too much, but now I think I did more than I originally thought. This is really bad but during the 2020 summer I went up to Lake Tahoe and learned how to drive a boat and a jet ski. During my team at Lake Tahoe, I also went tubing and I think that was where I started to value the time I had now and started living in the present. It was too pointless to worry about things that already happened and things that were yet to happen. I didn’t go on another trip until December 2020 when I went snowboarding which, again, I know sounds really selfish of me and it probably was. I experienced some of the best times of my life and was very grateful to be able to snowboard and have fun while others were fighting their hardest to even stay alive. I learnt how to drive, how to cook a perfect runny boiled egg, how to enjoy even the small things in life, and how to be a good person.

With covid, I also made a ton of friends. Some of those friends I hope to know for the rest of my life and have them at my wedding and such. A lot of those friends also came from the sport I did, swimming. I had never felt such a great team aspect to a sport like swimming until this year. Ironically, swimming is mostly an individual event where you have your own lane racing against others. Other sports that are considered team sports really do need the entire team to succeed. For example, in football, if the offensive line doesn’t do its job, then the quarterback can’t throw or the running back can’t run. If the quarterback can’t throw, then the receivers can’t catch. One little mishap could make everything go wrong. I had never felt the way I did this year for swim in terms of being part of a team. Everything felt so right and I felt like I was myself for the entire season. I got along with everyone on varsity and everyone was so kind, funny, and hardworking. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have pushed myself as hard as I did. I felt like I needed to get fast for my teammates. I made my best memories from this year in swimming, definitely.

I want to end this off with letting people know that sometimes things happen that happened out of their control. If they got a bad score on a test but they tried their hardest, could they really be faulted? If they stayed up until 1 studying and still got a bad score there was nothing else they could have done. If it doesn’t matter in 5 years, don’t spend more than 5 minutes worrying about it.