Repeat After Me

Chapter 25

It was like the first day of high school all over again – we were all nervous and excited to be back at school. We couldn't help but hug our friends as they walked through the classroom door, forgetting about social distancing almost immediately. The conversation level in the room reached new levels, and even when the first bell rang and the teacher came in, we continued to chat, to catch up, to revel in being in a group. I realised that even though I was an introvert, I was also a social being, and I had in fact missed people.

The English teacher Mrs Powell, also wanted to join in on the conversations. We didn't do anything formal at all in the class. She wanted us to write about our experience of the pandemic, to discuss it in small groups – she said that we absolutely must capture this experience in words. It felt like a great celebration of what we had been through – that we could sit in class and discuss the lockdown, like it was going down in history books. Like we'd come out of a Great War. Like we'd faced the greatest adversity and come out the other side.

I sat with Libby and Luisa, proud to be back in our uniforms, our blazers and pleated skirts, and out of our pyjamas, our hair post-pandemic fashioned, feeling more mature, more life experienced, more globally aware. We were in year 11 and our year had been disrupted, but it finally felt as though things were back on track.

By the end of the day, after double history, it felt boringly normal to be back at school and I felt nostalgic already for the quarantine. Degas had said 'It seems to me that today if the artist wishes to be serious ... he must once more sink himself in solitude.' My solitude was now over. It felt like a short precious period in my own history, and I was grateful to have experienced it.