Carina Pizarro is a high school student in Bridgewater. Her essay appears in InsiderNJ’s publication, “The Covid-19 Crisis: An InsiderNJ History.“

Distance learning was one of the hardest things I had to go through in my life. In the beginning before the pandemic I had just made the lacrosse team after weeks of hard work. I had good grades and everything was great.

It was a Friday and our English teacher said to us that she thought we weren’t going back to school after that weekend. None of us thought it was true, though. And, of course, we did not go back.

At that time, we did not realize how badly this would affect our lives. The first week was not too bad considering we were “going back” in a couple of weeks. After another week went by, I got very ill and I could hardly breathe. I thought I was going to die, it was so bad. I was never so sick.

I was recovering as the first COVID deaths hit Bridgewater after we left school. We were all on high alert while this was going on. We all knew we were in a crisis. The stores were packed with people. All the masks and hand sanitizers were gone. People were treating this like it was the apocalypse. I did not learn anything from supposed distance learning, but I did learn not to take the privileges you have like school for granted.