“Social distancing.” “Self quarantine.” “Mask up.”  On March 13, 2o2o, these terms integrated themselves into the daily vocabularies of Americans across the country. The COVID-19 pandemic created chaos and crossed boundaries, thrusting the world into situations that many believed they would never have to face in their lifetime.

Five years later, the world has adjusted to its new definition of “normal” and the once daily-used COVID-19 terms have nearly faded into obscurity.

Still, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were felt all around the world — but everyone experienced something different. Below are a handful of mementos from Sidelines editors, capturing just a few snippets of life in the time of a pandemic.

Alyssa Williams, Editor-in-chief

It’s been a whirlwind since COVID-19 began. On one hand, I feel like the same 17-year-old just now realizing, “Oh man, I actually have to plan for the future,” but at the same time, like a wisened old sage. Well, I’m not that old. 

COVID-19 taught me a lot. It taught me that our country isn’t as united as I thought it was. That, sometimes, people don’t care about things unless it affects them. That we would totally be screwed if a zombie apocalypse broke out in the United States. 

However, it also taught me the importance of human connection. During the lockdown, I personally had the time of my life as an introvert. Sure, I wasn’t allowed to leave the house, but I barely left the house anyway. 

As time wore on, I missed my friends more and more, and something interesting happened after we came back. We rarely spent time together after school before the pandemic — too much homework — but we found ourselves lingering in parking lots. Going out to get fast food. Spending more time together than ever. 

It also taught me the importance of making decisions. It’s ironic. During COVID-19, I was deciding which college I wanted to go to. Now, I’m deciding which law school. So many of the same factors play the same role in these decisions: financial aid, sick family members, location. 

COVID-19 left a lasting impact on us all — people masking when sick, taking disease tests instead of just powering through the day — and I find myself at the same crossroads five years later.

Bailey Brantingham, Managing editor

As a high schooler set to graduate in 2021, COVID-19 plunged my life — and the lives of my classmates — into uncertainty. We didn’t know how, when, if or (most especially) where we were going to graduate.

Rather than have to “mask up” for eight hours a day in a classroom surrounded by empty desks, I opted to attend math, English and my three other classes from my bedroom. I got carpet burns on my hands and knees during my “digital gym class,” during which I was required to do push-ups on my bedroom floor in front of my Chromebook camera (yes, I’m serious.) Zoom became my life, and I never saw many of my classmates in person again.

We did end up graduating (masked-up and social distancing on our school’s football field — which is better than the previous year’s Zoom graduation, I suppose,) and I made it to college (eventually) which was my goal.

Despite turning the world on its head, COVID-19 did provide me with one positive thing: my future career.

For years we watched the world in pictures and through broadcasts, and some people (like me) were hooked. In 2021, I switched my major from biology to journalism.

In the years since, I’ve reflected quite a bit on the person I became during all that time by myself. I’ve improved a lot, too, I think. For example, it’s been five years, and I’m only mildly annoyed when I open up the Zoom app.

Jenene Grover, News editor

I was in my second semester of sophomore year when the country locked down for COVID-19. The first few weeks felt like a slightly extended spring break, but the pandemic quickly became terrifying. I didn’t go farther than my driveway for maybe three months. My mom watched the COVID numbers religiously, which I appreciated, but it increased my anxiety and depression.

I distracted myself with new YouTubers and Netflix shows like “Unus Annus” and “Gilmore Girls,” but my depression hit an all-time low by November 2020. In 2021, I started visiting people more and communicating with friends, and my state improved. Talking to my family about my mental health helped me crawl out of the hole I dug for myself.

Online school was the worst part of the pandemic for me — aside from my mental health. I remember sitting on a six-hour-long Zoom while my journalism class put together the 20-year print edition. I remember falling asleep on a physics Zoom one time because I just couldn’t pay attention. I remember hating Zoom.

Now, I can tolerate Zoom. It’s certainly not my first choice of video-chat, but I know how to use it.

My family was lucky, for the most part, when it came to any of us getting COVID-19. However, my grandmother and dog passed away in November and December 2020.

Since the pandemic, I’ve learned how to better regulate my mental health, how to be a better person, my increasing interest in politics and journalism and how much my friends care about me. I would never wish for the time of the pandemic ever again, and I’m glad we’re out of it and back to “normal,” if we ever were.

Shauna Reynolds, Features editor

I was a stay-at-home mom trying to build a career as an author. Between my husband’s frequent travel for work and my kids’ long school days, I was accustomed to having the house to myself.

When the world shut down, what followed was togetherness. A great deal of inescapable togetherness.

And it was nice. We made the most of it by trying to build rhythm and routine into our days and weeks. We ate family dinners and listened to records. We went through boxes of sidewalk chalk, tried new recipes, walked our dog around the neighborhood almost every day and even adopted another dog.

Meanwhile, something happened to my formerly impressive attention span. It’s difficult for me to stay focused enough to read a book, much less write one. I went through a major creative slump that led me to step aside from writing and return to school.

At some point during all of this, I stopped worrying as much about what other people think about me. I’m more concerned about how they treat other people. I’m happy to say this was a permanent change.

Seeing people pick fights about everything from mask mandates and vaccines to Black lives mattering made it clear that some people give very little thought or care to the people around them. I refuse to let the thoughts of people like that influence me, and I do what I can to show love and support to the people around me.

Brett Walker, Sports editor

My experience during COVID-19 was a lot like everyone else’s. One day, I was in the midst of my freshman year of high school, and the next, I was stuck at home for weeks on end. 

The pandemic brought my family its fair share of bad. My grandfather passed away in the fall of 2020. After battling cancer for years, COVID, combined with other health issues, ended up being too much.

But with no disregard for the lives lost or the countless hours put in by healthcare workers, I choose to look back on the good that came from the pandemic five years removed. 

For one, COVID helped bring my family closer together for sure. While always tight-knit, the pandemic allowed for more time spent in each other’s company. Suppers eaten in front of the TV transitioned over to the long-neglected kitchen table. It was a small change, but an important one that we still follow today.

Another thing that the pandemic gave me was more time with my older sister. Seven years apart in age, we always spent time together, but with an abnormal age gap, we never bonded as much as we probably should’ve. That time spent is still important to both of us, especially since she got married and moved out of our childhood house in the summer of 2020 (even if she lives five minutes down the road and we see each other all of the time). 

COVID-19 is infamous for causing isolation, but in the case of my family, it brought us closer together.

Noah McLane, Lead news reporter

Five years ago, I had just started an internship at the Chickamauga battlefield near Chattanooga and just finished my second year studying history at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. I was not studious, and I definitely didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. 

It was my first time living off campus, and the stress of school on top of working to pay rent was taking its toll on me physically and mentally. 

Then the world shut down. 

At first, it seemed like we were in for a month-long spring break, nothing more. But as the number of confirmed cases rose, my mental health disintegrated. I dropped out of school in 2020 with little intention of going back. 

In 2022, I mustered up the courage — and the money — to return to school part-time at MTSU. 

I have since found my passion: journalism.

Eventually, part-time led to full-time, and now I’m only a few months from earning my degree. COVID-19 took so much from so many people, but I am grateful for the experience because it enabled me to discover my passion. The pandemic let me learn about myself and become better at loving myself. I’m proud of the growth, despite the hopelessness. 

Five years ago, I would have been shocked to see myself as I am now. Shocked and proud.

Emma Burden, Lead features reporter

On March 13, 2020, I took a lap around my high school’s gym. I remember taking a photo of a banner hanging on the wall, thinking that, after today, everything would be different. I don’t know why I took that photo in the moment, but, looking back, I think it’s because I knew that even the mundane things in life would change irrevocably. 

The start of the pandemic was a terrifying time for me as someone who struggles with health anxiety. But, on the opposite end, the pandemic was also a bit exciting. I am one of the lucky ones who didn’t have family members suffer or die from COVID, and my lockdown was a few months where I was able to drop everything and work on my art. As a writer, I don’t think I will ever have that much free time or unfettered creativity.

I also remember that the start of the pandemic was a time of hope. It seemed to me that, for the first and only time in my life, the world bonded together for the greater good. As well, I was deeply inspired by the work done by activists during the Black Lives Matter movement. I’m afraid to say that I don’t believe I’ll ever see that unity again.

Jacob Burgess, Lead sports reporter

Educationally, I knew what to expect with online school, having done a year of it before COVID-19. I had already been in that spot that most students were in during the pandemic — leading their own education.  

COVID-19 brought a new meaning to dedication and hard work at the same time. I started working during the pandemic and delved into my job since school wasn’t a stress. Eventually, school and work led to burnout. I had to learn work-life balance, which led me to embrace more of my hobbies.  

I continue to work on balance within my schedule, with the goal of not going back to the feeling I had during COVID-19. I have realized you need things to look forward to because, without them, it’s easy to get sucked into a bad cycle.

Paige Mast, Multimedia editor

I had a tamer experience in comparison to some of my friends. COVID happened right around my junior year of high school, and I had just moved to Tennessee a little over a year before.

In hindsight, it was a slow change at first. My college tours got canceled, less or no hours at work, scary news articles. And then my school shut down. I was confined to outdoor hangouts, and when I needed to get out of the house, I drove around with my brothers. 

We went online not too long after, which was weird for me. If I’m being honest, I participated less because it felt dumb doing choir warm-ups in my room with my mom down the hall (sorry, Mrs. Scoggins!)

My AP classes felt harder for me because I study and work better in front of a teacher and a classroom. I remember how bad I felt for my family members and friends who had graduated in their car for a “drive-thru graduation” and hoped it would not be like that for me. 

Now that I’m a college senior and soon to graduate, I am hyper-aware of sickness in myself and others. COVID-19 oddly helped my abilities to work online a bit better, but I still prefer in-person classes for the most part.

However, I look fondly back on the super cringey trends from those times, and kind of crave that nostalgia because it felt a bit easier back then before I had more adult responsibilities.

Aiden O’Neill, Magazine editor

Sitting in an AP class, a class friend showed me the news on his phone. A virus called COVID-19 hit the United States and would be giving us a few days off from school, or so we thought. I never could have imagined that this virus would take away the rest of my senior year of high school, my prom, my graduation and even pieces of my college experience. Additionally, I never would have guessed that losing these monumental events was comparatively one of the luckiest scenarios to come out of the pandemic.

This virus affected everyone differently depending on their set of circumstances, but some of the shifts seemed universal. The states of politics, social media, socializing, health and more were altered in ways that felt hauntingly irreversible.

While the world has been forever changed by this global pandemic, I’ve noticed a shift back to normalcy within myself and within the people surrounding me over the past five years. It’s oddly liberating to see how we can persevere through hardship, that some things can never be taken away from us and that time heals most wounds.

COVID-19 took a lot of valuable things from each of us, but it also gave us perspective and strength that we wouldn’t have gained otherwise.

Megan Goble, Copy editor

When COVID-19 was becoming more talked about, with a few confirmed cases in the U.S., I was working in a kitchen. At first, some of us were encouraged not to call out of work due to being understaffed despite having runny noses and a cough. Soon after, we were wearing masks and washing our hands every 30 minutes to the point that they were dry and cracking. 

Before it got too bad, I was already on a break from work due to my father’s death. I did test positive for COVID-19. I had to isolate from the household for two weeks, receiving my dinner at my bedroom door and wearing a mask to walk to the bathroom. 

I grew up with a Southern family that often said phrases like “dirt don’t hurt.” We remained clean, of course, but we weren’t obsessive. 

After the pandemic, I still washed my hands too much. I was nervous every time I was around someone who coughed. I feared going around my older family members when I was suffering from allergies. 

I had to slowly deal with some negative effects the pandemic had on my mentality, but it helped me understand a little more about health and life overall. 

I found some of my favorite movies and rekindled my passion for video games and writing. I saw a lot of my friends go back to their creative outlets they still do since it helped them get through the lockdown. Some parts of me changed, but it wasn’t all bad. 

To contact the News editor, email [email protected].

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