Living through the COVID-19 pandemic is a new, different experience for people all over the world. Ever since March, masks and social distancing have been required in public places. This is considered the new normal for most people around the world. Through quarantine, staying in touch with friends and family has become a challenge. To prevent the spread of the virus, many stayed home to self quarantine. People had to become creative in order to communicate, since face-to-face conversations were not always an option. There were many different obstacles people in Freedom and all over the world had to overcome, including this lack of in-person communication.

Especially for teens who are used to social interaction everyday at school, not being able to see any friends felt a little weird. 

“I was able to keep in touch with my friends and family by seeing them in person and reaching them by phones. I live with my family, except my two sisters who I would call, facetime, and text. I am used to not being able to see them, as they live two thousand miles away. On the other hand, I was not used to not seeing any of my friends. At first I did not hangout with anyone, but I was able after a few weeks. I chose to hangout with only 1 person, as they also chose to only hang out with me too in order to lessen our contact with others. We obviously did not want the virus, so we made sure to only hangout with each other. With all of my other friends, I would mostly Snapchat and Facetime them,” sophomore Katrina Adams said.

Adams stayed with only her family for part of the virus and then visited with one friend. She kept in mind the safety and precautions and decided to only hang out with her one friend, so risks of the virus were not increased. 

“At the beginning of quarantine communicating with people was hard because we had a mandatory quarantine, but after a while, it began to get easier because my friends and I were allowed to start hanging out,” sophomore Kamryn Vilscek said.

Many students were in the same boat as Vilscek. It may have been harder to communicate at the beginning of the outbreak when everyone was strictly quarantined, compared to now, where a lot of society has been returning back to their typical routines. 

“I kept in touch with my friends by Facetiming them quite frequently, or golfing while maintaining social distances, and I text my friends very often,” freshman Logan Bickerstaff said. 

Bickerstaff found a way that he could spend time with his friends and social distance. Golfing makes it easy to keep players six feet away from one another, while also allowing them to hang out. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic still going on, no one is certain what will happen in the future. The students and community members ofFreedom have been able to contact and rely on each other through the thick of it all, so hopefully that is the same for the future to come. It does not matter if people communicate through social media or in person, as long as everyone is keeping in touch safely.