Walking down the corridor, trying to maintain social distancing from the students around me, I slowly climbed up the stairs and walked until I reached the last floor of our school. The first thing I did was glance over to 8th-C, and that was when memories started to flow in, how we couldn’t say goodbye to our old teachers, how we didn’t have a chance to say how amazing that year was, and many more. 8th grade was just tremendous both academically and otherwise, I found true friends in that classroom, the teachers were astonishing, which doesn’t mean my current teachers weren’t. But I and my classmates got along with our 8th-grade teachers pretty well, anyone who looked from afar would assume, we all were long-lost friends.
But that was a year and a half back, and I couldn’t even say goodbye to some of the students and teachers that left school, I sighed and started walking to 10th-B, boy how the years went fast. Before I got inside, I sanitized my hand and set foot for the first time into the classroom, there were a few students and they looked up at me like I was an alien walking straight out of Mars and I felt weird, kind of like claustrophobic. I took the second seat on the first row, and kept my bag down, took a deep breath, and invited the offline class to my mind. I looked around and smiled at some students, and then I realized my mask covered my hideous smile. The first day started off with our usual old intercom assembly, and then the first class which was math started, followed by other subjects, the last class of the day was French. I didn't feel like, it'd been a year or so, I talked to most of the students and also the teachers.
Carmel school maintained strict social distancing and Covid-19 protocols, we weren’t allowed to borrow or give away our things to others, not more than one person could go to the washroom, during our recess we remained in our respective classrooms and it was really sad because I missed walking down our third playground with my friends. Most of my friends were in the first batch and were from other classes and I was in the second batch, even if we saw each other, we’d practically have to scream, so we could maintain a fair enough distance.
Looking back on everything that occurred today, I realized one particular thing, life is all about socializing with people, getting to know them, and when you reach that moment like a pandemic where you can’t even argue at a person face to face, that’s when we realize we took everything granted in the past. We are back to normal, but it’s a different normal, but reasonably enough we will surely return back to those old classrooms we love, we have each other’s backs, and we are in this together.