<\/p>\n
You\u2019re in 10th grade, approaching your fifth Zoom class of the day, and you\u2019ve learned nothing. Autumn might be near, but you remain frozen on March 13, 2020, the day the pandemic turned what was supposed to be a two-week vacation into a two-year hiatus from normalcy. You\u2019ve been silently rotting in your dirty bedroom for months, only interacting with your mom when she brings up a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch and with your equally exhausted classmates \u2014 most of them strangers to you \u2014 in breakout rooms. You have lost yourself. The world is enveloped in constant social chaos and financial upheaval, and all you can do is log in and log off as it burns to the ground. There is still no cure. Every adult you know is talking about these \u201cunprecedented times,\u201d this doomed future, yet in the same breath they tell you to pick a college and a life to live. Everything is moving too fast. You wonder, \u201cHow could it be that less than a year ago everything was fine?\u201d<\/p>\n
You need an escape.<\/p>\n
You turn your camera off \u2014\u00a0if you were brave enough to even have it on in the first place, brave enough to broadcast to your class the state of your misery (and your room).<\/p>\n
And you open Pinterest.<\/p>\n