Feb 29: My Friends and I took a day trip to Philadelphia on lead day, February 29, 2020 before COVID-19 was relevant in our lives
April/May: I finished my senior capstone project which was mechanically engineering a thermal cycler. They purpose of it was to amplify DNA samples using the polymerase chain reaction
June 10: I graduated in a very untraditional way. The auditorium was fill with a couple teachers, staff, and my immediate family as I crossed the stage.
June 9: My friends and I all gathered to take graduation pictures in our schools stadium to celebrate the past 4 years together
Aug 13: I had to receive all of my scholarships outdoors and at a distance
July 13: My parents saw my senior year stripped away but still allowed me to have a graduation party. This is a video of me on the 100 foot long slip and slide!
May 10: My family went for walks outdoors when there wasn't much else to do. This was the Rail Trail in York, Pennsylvania
March 31: My family also spent time on zoom with extended family to safely interact with each other
June 30: There were many days and nights where my friends and I would go swimming or sit around a fire to still be together
Aug 24: My friends and I went on a hike along the Susquehanna River
June 4: Shortly after graduation, many of us went to the beach to celebrate the end of high school
Oct 17: My friends and I ate dinner together outdoors in the cold
June 1: I caught a crab!
June 10: Milo and I went swimming together!
July 25: Milo and I also went on hikes at places near my house
July 31: I got a job at Mucho Gusto, a new Mexican restaurant in the area
July 31: I worked at Mucho Gusto with my girlfriend
I decided lockdown was a pretty good time to perfect my handstand!
I also saw nature more as I spent more time outside. The picture to the right is a sunrise at Corolla, NC (also the background of the website :)) and the one below is a sunset over my backyard
Oct 25: I carved pumpkins with my girlfriend to celebrate Halloween
Oct 31: My friends and I had a small get together on Halloween in our costumes
As a freshman, I've had the most untraditional start to college out of many generations. Back at the start of 2020, I was getting accepted into colleges and made my decision to attend UMD. Little did I know that I'd be forced to do all of my learning virtually while stuck at home missing out on the social aspects of being in college. When March 13 came, my high school was shut down and then we didn't get to go back at all. I wasn't able to present my capstone project which I had worked on all year, and I missed graduation. Then over the summer I had to watch my first semester of college get stripped away. Because to me it doesn't truly feel like college when all I can do is sit in my room on my computer. As the fall semester started I got to watch some of my friends who did go to campus have fun and have somewhat of a first semester. They were still limited but had a lot more fun than me. My mentality for this pandemic has been that I can deal with it now and it will be back to normal soon. It wasn't fun to lose my senior year, but I had hope for college. It wasn't fun to be home for this semester, but I had next semester on campus to look forward to. Now I'm seeing that next semester isn't going to be any different. I'm going to be stuck at home again and continue living a very boring life. It seems like a whole year of my life has been wasted, because it hasn't been fun at all and the end of it keeps getting farther and farther away. I can't change any of it though and that's the story of my life this year. I don't have control of my life and it isn't fun at all. At this point all I have to look forward to is the fall semester of 2021. That a long way out but that's the only light at the end of my tunnel. Life is full of challenges and this is one that I can't get around. I'm stuck living in the middle of it. As a mechanical engineer, I like to build things and have hands on learning experiences. But with being stuck at home, the fun freshman classes which are full of mini-projects are all busy work and a very boring unenthusiastic way of learning. Hopefully life will return to normal soon so I can take my life off pause and start living again.