The Start: COVID-19 and the pandemic

Life During COVID-19: The Single Most impactful thing in my life

We're here in 2025 and it's crazy I've never actually written about this before. But hey, better too late than never amiright?

So yeah COVID-19, masking, PPE, social distancing, quarantine. Where do I start? It's crazy how different life was just two years ago. And crazy thing is that we're still in the pandemic but now it's considered an endemic since the virus keeps on mutating but has gotten weaker and weaker over time.

But to start off with, let me explain how the pandemic actually started affecting us here in Atlanta. It all started on March 13, 2025: a date that will forever be ingrained in my memory. It was just like any normal day. I was in my 5th period AP Comp Sci A class and it was near the end of the day. For me, I was pretty much chilling cause it was my senior year and I already accepted an offer at my dream in-state school: Georgia Tech. So for me at that point it was just a matter of maintaining my grades and hopefully do well enough on my AP exams so I won't have to retake those classes in college.

But little did I know that the news that would come out on that day would change the course of my life for the next three years. My teacher was scrolling through his laptop and then quietly turned on the projector. He then pulled up an email that he received and directed the class to look at the screen. I don't remember the exact wording of the email but I remember that it said something like: the first two confirmed cases of COVID-19 in a school in South Fulton have been found. School will be closed on Monday until we reassess.

So yeah that was the first time that COVID actually hit us locally for us to actually care about it. Before then, COVID was on the news and media for months but it was mostly centered Asia and only entered the US in the past 1-2 months. Well, so the weekend passed by, as expected we didn't have school on Monday but then I remember Fulton County Schools (FCS - my school district), randomly decided to have school on that next Tuesday since those two cases they found in the schools in South GA were isolated and those ppl were in quarantin.

But after that Tuesday, schools were cancedled for the next two weeks and then we would supposedly come back. At least that's what we all thought at the time. About a week in those two weeks, cases started to grow like crazy in GA. We have moved all of our classes online on Teams. We ran on a sort of half-day schedule where we had three classes per day and each of the classes would be 30 min each instead of the usual 1 hour. The weeks started to go by and I started reminiscing all the fun events I'm missing out on: LGPE for band, GA FBLA SLC, and a band trip to Carnegie Hall but that all got canceled shortly thereafter. But to be frank, it was already April, I already accepted my offer at GT, and I could give less of a shit of school.

AP Exams 2020

All I really needed to worry about at this wpoint was doing well on my AP Exams so I don't have to retake those classes in college. Speaking of, it was soon announced shortly that AP Exams will also be moved online due to the pandemic. And man, looking back that whole situation was such a mess. For me, I had to do 5 exams which was funnily enough the most number of exams I had taken in one year. So I was pretty confident in the exams I was going to take. I studied pretty hard throughout the year so was feeling pretty confident. And since I was home during spring break, I spent the time grinding MCQs and FRQs.

But what made the whole situation such a mess was that the exam format is now completely different from what it'll be from the in-person version. I remember instead of the normal MCQ+FRQ sections you'd usually have on the AP exams, it was instead just all FRQ and it was timed to be completed in ~30 min instead of the usual 2 hours. As expected, this caused a ton of uproar among high school students. Like WTF collegeboard, you expect ppl to test an entire year's worth of knowledge in just 30 min? How's that fair? In addition to athat, they also said that the exam will be adminstered in a single sesion that is the same time for students all around tehe world. Imagine kids in Korea and China who are taking the AP Exams had to take it at 2 or 3AM? DO you think their focus will be at its best during those hours?

The Time finally came to take the exam and it was such a disaster for many ppl. Luckily for me, I didn't run into any trouble myself, but what they had us do was write all of our answers down on paper, scan it, and then upload it. Yup so despite this being an online exam, we had to physically write down our answers down despit ethe entire exam being online. This caused so many technical disruptions for many students which many have predicted. First of all, many students had troublesending the pics from the phone to their PC> For me, I had a Mac so I could just use airdrop but for others, they had to rely on other solutions like emailing it to themselves (which you can imagine in a time-constrinaed environment like this isn't idael.).

Additionaly, many students had trouble actually uploading those images. The website itself accepted .jpeg, .jpg, .png, images so .heic - the default option on iPhone - was out of question. Assuming that the student was able to get the file on their computer and had it in the right fileformat, many still had trouble just getting it all uploaded. The collegeboard servers were so overloaded that even if the image was uploading and still processing, the exam itself would timeout before it could even be completed. Again, this didn't happen to me but imagine the frustration that students have gone through, taking the exam and finishing it but not able to get it done because of an issue that wasn't even their fault. It was such a messy situation and to rectify the issue, CollegeBoard allowed the test takers to take a retake and then there was a retake for tha tretake, and then another rtretake for that retake for that retake. (which by that time it was already near August btw). And despite all of this and th eexam being online, the cost to take the exam remained the same so that really says a lot about CollegeBoard being a "non-profit."

Graduation

Anyways, so yeah that whole situation was such a mess but let's look at the more positive side - I finally graduated high school! Because we were still in the whole pandemic situation, many schools decided to cancel their graduation ceremony and instead host an online one. But what my school did was pretty unique. We had an in-person graduation ceremony in the North Point Mall parking lot and an online one livestreamed on YouTube. The in-person one was a drive-thru graduation where we all sat in our cars, tuned into a radio station, and then each speaker would come up one-by-one on a makeshift stage where they'll then give their own speeches.

It was honestly pretty unique and I'm glad they were able to host something for us while still being relatively safe. It sucks that we weren't able to have the graduation ceremony in our usual Verizon Amphitheatre especially since I was performing there as part of concert band for the last three years. But looking back, our ceremony was pretty unique and def one to remember for a long time.

6/30/25

Damn, am I taking forever to write this but let's get right back into it. So yeah that's pretty much how my high school career ended. Very interesting experience especially when looking back but do I miss high school? Nah, not really. Before my senior year, I remember high school being the place where everything everyone did is just for the sake of college. Want to become an officer for a club? Want to join a National Honors Society? Want to start your own non-profit? All of this stuff, 90% of students from my club did it just for the sake of college apps. It all felt so fake. And looking back, these same ppl who would flex about how they've achieved so much are in the exact same position that I am today - working a 9-5 corporate job where they (including me) are a nobody and just one employee out of thousands and thousands.

But that being said, I do miss some people back from high school. Many of my close friends from my school I've gotten to meet again at GT since a lot of them either got admitted or transferred over their 2nd year. BUt some, that last of school in March would literally be the last day I'd ever see them in my life and it's hard to see them now when they've moved-out-of-state and don't have time to meetup.

Rest of 2020 + Beginning College

Now let me move on to how the rest of 2020 went. After my high school graduation, I didn't actually have much of a break because I was starting GT in the summer! I got accepted into a program called Ignite where I was required to start college a semester early and as expected all of my classes would be hosted online due to the pandemic. But before I started my college journey, I had to take care of some other things. First of, I competed in GA FBLA SLC and I maanged to place 1st for the Word Processing event which means that I'm now moving to the National's level! We were supposed to have Nationals in Salt Lake City but as you may guessed that all got moved online. Still, I had to compete so I did a take-home test and managed to place 2nd in the nation! I was awarded $350 and a trophy which I still have to this day! Funnily enough, because the NLC was online in 2020, I actually made more money then I'd have lost because with the cost of hotels and flights, it'll have exceed the $350 that I won.

The rest of thes ummer was very eventful for the world but very uneventuful for me. If you search up anything related to 2020 online, you'll see so many news articles and memes about it being the worst year ever. Aside from COVID, ther was also BLM protests in support for George Floyd and anti-police brutality. The economy was tanking and inflation was going up at crazy rates. Toilet paper was hard to find in the grocery store - yes our most essential good during of crisis lmaoooo.

But for me in actuality, it was very uneventufl and boring. I was with my family at home and for us it was the first time in years that we actually spent time together. Ever since mmy brother went to college and moved to Cali, I couldn't spend much time with him so this was the first time in years where we were all together. Since all my classes were online and going outside felt scary. I spent most of my days sitting at hom in front of my laptop.

Fall 2020 - Moving In and Out of College

Now for fall is when things started getting interesting. At this point, we were 5 mmonths into the pandemic and many had enough of it. There were so many conspiracy theories and misinfomriation going around such as with chinguard masking, anti-vaccine BS, etc. FOr me, Fall 2020 was when I was supposed to start my first semester at Gt. But given that we were still in the pandemic, GT gave us a choice for freshmen to stay at home and commute to campus only if we had an in-person class.

For me, me and the bois were planning to room together at Glenn/Towers in a quad. But since we didn't want to take risks, two of my roommates decided to instead room at an appt near West Village since it was the only one that offered a 1b1b.

I heard a lot of bad stories about that appt so I instead decided to get an appt called Montag which is known as one of the better appts on West campus. Since the high school friends who I was going to room with ditched, I had to get a random roommate. Anyway, I don't feel like writing a whole section about this so tl;dr I moved in; roommates was cool; campus felt empty; didn't want to risk testing positive; all in-person recitation/labs ended up getting moved online; I moved out after a week. So yeah, I basically spent one week at GT during my entire first year lol. Looking back, I didn't really miss much cause everyone later told me that those who were on campus would just attend their lectures online from their dorm and at the most the library. Even all the clubs and events go moved online or canceled so there was nothing to do on-campus.

Staying at Home + 2021

I spent the entirety of my 1st year of college at home. Was it boring? Yes. Was it lonely? Very much, yes. Like many others, I was super looking forward to my freshman year since it was my first time I'd get to live on my own and be myself. But that never happened so Fall 2021 which was my sophomore year was basically my freshman year since itw as the first real time I lived on my own away from home.

But before we get to that, let me go over briefly some key events before that time. First of, despite how depressing the world seemed at the time, not everything about COVID was bad. First of, since so many people were at home, it decreased the world's pollution considerably and nature was starting to return. Second, it left many lasting impacts on telecommuting and WFH, which we still the effects of today. Even though many company execs want their employees to return back to the office, many jobs are now offered remote or at least are offered hybrid using software like Zoom, Teams, etc. And in school, a lot of my exams were conducted online so I could just take it from the comfort of my own home. Third, duringa ll of 2020-21, I never once got sick. Back in grade school, I used to catch a cold or get sick all the time but that first year into the pandemic was probably the longest I've gone without ever getting sick.

Now, let's move onto some key events that happened end of 2020 and beginning of 2021. I don't like to talk about politics but one of the most significant events of 2020 was the presidential election. Trump lost the election to Biden and was set to leave office in January. Now Biden's inauguration has been extensively covered by the media but it'd be ignorant to not acknowledge the January 6th riots which to me was one of the darkest times of America nowadays. It still baffles me looking back that Trump is the only US president to this day to not accept the peaceful transfer of power after a fair election and then directed protestors to overthrow the capital. And if you seriously don't believe that Trump caused those riots, all you have to do is listen to his speech right before it and that tells you everything.

So yeah that's my recap of 2020 and the beginning of the pandemic. those were some really crazy times man and it really brough out the best and worst of ppl. Once I moved on-campus for real this time for my sophomore year, I had trouble making friends ngl and I felt a bit lonely since many already established their own friend group. Yeah, I made a couple friends from my classes and clubs but none of them really stuck around after we passed those classes or graduated. So now, hopefully this starts to give a better hitn in why I'm involved with the fandom I'm involved with.