This summer was one to remember. With the virus keeping us in our homes, we have all gotten tiresome of our families this year. However, there are some people who took their stay-at-home summer and made it very useful to their schoolwork, sports skills, or really anything else that they wanted to learn instead of sitting around the house being bored. Erik Laari, a junior at Sunlake High School, took his summer by the reigns and made it useful. He got a job at Dairy Queen, took a class over the summer, and helped his family along the long road that the virus has created. I asked him if his summer was any different than the normal ones, and he claimed “Yes! I was able to do some things that I usually couldn’t do while being stuck at home, such as take some online school over the summer to get ahead in school, or volunteer at  summer camp. Although they did change some things to correspond with the virus.” The Coronavirus really changed a lot of people’s view on certain things in the world, and we need to make sure that we stay in tip-top shape and we are always willing to do what we need to do for the safety of everyone in our family, country, and really world too. I also asked him about his family and if they were worried about the virus. I also asked were you in full lockdown mode or were you not too worried about the virus? He responded with, “I wasn’t that worried about the virus. My mom is a nurse and in the medical field so that eased my worries a bit. My family wasn’t super lockdown in the early months, but as it got worse and worse, my family got more and more serious about it.” I also asked him if he enjoyed the last 1-2 months of online school, or if he hated it. He replied with, “I discovered very quickly I did not like online school. Not only did I miss social interactions, but it’s a lot harder to maintain a schedule without the pressuring from teachers and parents.” Although the world is slowly coming back to normal, we are wearing masks at school, we have to sanitize our hands a lot, and we need to stay socially distanced from one another. The social aspect is there, but it feels like we are missing something that we used to have. I am sure that as time goes on, our lives will eventually go back to normal, but we need to stay safe in every possible way we can. I then asked him about his new job and the difference between working with school and with summer, and how it is different with the virus. “Yeah, it’s, in one word, weird. I like working, but the masks are really hard to get used too. It’s been getting better over the weeks, but I still don’t like them and they don’t feel normal to me. With school, it’s obviously harder with my certain activities and my homework, but I still try to cut in some hours so that I can have more working experience, and a more social experience overall.” Jobs everywhere are seemingly becoming, as Erik said, “weird.” The mask wearing may get annoying at times, especially when yawning, but as we keep wearing them day after day, they may become a daily part of our life. To end it, this summer and past few months have been crazy. The amount of changes our world has had to make are crazy, from the masks to the social distancing, but our world has cooped with it and if we keep doing what we are doing, we can stay on pace to a normal lifestyle once again.