As quarantine’s birthday nears, we are forced to recall the memories of that fateful Friday. 

How could anyone predict that the two-week spring break turned into a year-long quarantine with currently no end in sight.

Senior Samantha Perez was waiting to go to a robotics competition that weekend.

Perez said, “I remember I was so excited for the first competition of the season since we had been working hard for six weeks building our robot but around eight all of our phones started ringing and said the competition was canceled.” 

Not knowing the severity of this new virus Perez thought it was something like the flu and that it would take a few weeks to go away. 

However, Perez was not faced with that reality Perez said, “If only I could go back and tell myself to enjoy all the opportunities I had to enjoy every moment I could spend with my friends and participate in all the Loretto traditions.” 

Karen Nevarez remembers that fateful day a little differently. 

Nevarez said, “I remember I had to do a school project that was going to be due after Spring Break and I just wanted to get it done so I could enjoy my break, then I suddenly heard that Spring Break was going to be extended a week but it was weird.”

Instead of having an extended Spring break, the students attended class via Zoom, something Loretto had never done before. 

On the last day of Spring Break, Junior Loretta Quintana remembers hearing how they were going to postpone the students returning to campus for a couple of weeks. 

Quintana said, “If I knew that on March 13 I would be experiencing my last day of in-school learning I would definitely have enjoyed it more. “I kept hearing about COVID and COVID but honestly, I thought that it was going to end very quickly.”

The sudden change to online learning and COVID becoming a pandemic created chaos in our once simple life.  

Nevarez said, “ I was super stressed because my computer was acting funny and I was scared of the thought of ending the school year like this, mostly because I only had three months of Loretto experience.”  

Changing from normal to completely online school was a tough challenge Loretto students had to face but now all of that is a faint memory. 

As both happy and sad memories are relieved by the starting date of quarantine approaching the Loretto students to keep working hard.