5/5/20 Allen Vaiman PD 7

Allen Vaiman

5/5/20

Period 7

With everything that's been going on lately, I hope that everyone is still staying safe and being cautious. That being said, the quarantine will end someday soon hopefully and I hope that we take a few lessons away from our experience with this virus. Pandemics and catastrophes, while undoubtedly tragic, present us with unique opportunities to majorly change the way we do things before starting again with everyday life. In terms of general morals, we should always be proactive rather than reactive and stay open minded, especially to the words and warnings of experts. Epidemiologists have been prophesying about an outbreak like this for years beforehand and unsurprisingly, they were right. Our day to day life has faced a pretty big disruption since the start of COVID, but I appreciate the efforts of public officials and private institutions to keep everyone from panicking and trying experimental alternatives to our traditional systems. Closing schools was definitely the right call. Remote learning, while certainly not refined enough to be a complete replacement to schooling, has proven to be a decent supplement to close out our year of education. I think it's something that schools should flesh out and streamline over the next few years so that they can be prepared for any other type of disruptive anomaly that may come our way. We have the technology, now more than ever, to make this into a viable alternative with just a little cooperation and polish. 

Unfortunately there are aspects of the school experience that simply cannot be replicated online like prom and graduation and it's a huge bummer that this happened during our senior year, but there are some things you just can't control. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't be afraid to experiment with these systems outside of times when we are forced to do so. We tend to stay relatively stagnant and even take comfort in the lack of drastic change that happens from day to day and year to year until something happens that breaks the cycle. We should be embracing change rather than delaying it. We are still just at the beginning of the 21st century and yet, for better or for worse, we still operate by fundamentally the same working and learning systems that have been around since the first industrial revolution. The time to try new things is now, and I hope that we can all capitalize on this chance and not just pass it by without a second thought. As a final note, I think that our predicament has taught us to be more grateful for the balance within our normal lives. While many of us were looking forward to the prospect of somehow breaking the monotony of our daily lives, we soon began to miss the structure of our schedules as well. We must strive to achieve balance in all things; work and life, acceptance and skepticism, tradition and innovation. Here's to hoping that we can all find our balance among these trying times. Stay safe, stay sane, and as always, stay curious.