Ever since Mar. 2020, COVID-19 has dominated almost every facet of our daily lives. It’s on the front pages of the news, on the signs that remind you to wear your mask, and in the mind of just about every American. As one of the most disruptive events of the 21st century, it has produced a plethora of negative effects on a variety of subjects, including economics, human health, and political tension. Amidst all these tragedies however, I consider it extremely important to be optimistic and make the best of any situation. That, dear reader, is the exact purpose of this article.

     Like many high school sophomores, I had a busy schedule before the pandemic hit. I would get up in the morning, go to school for seven hours, come back home, do a lot of homework, go to swim practice, come back home and do more homework, then go to bed and get six hours of sleep. Repeat. I had become

so used to an overcrowded schedule that it no longer bothered me that I barely had a life outside of school. Either that or I was just too sleep-deprived to notice. But come the weekend of Mar. 14, everything stopped. School was shut down, my swim practices were postponed, and I was suddenly stuck at home with nothing to do for the first time in months. Let me tell you, it was quite an adjustment. For weeks I was constantly trying to find something to occupy myself with, simply because I wasn’t used to being bored. I was so unfamiliar with the idea of not having impending responsibilities hovering over me that I was actively seeking them out. Honestly, it took quite a bit of time for me to realize that having some personal freedom is necessary. Ever since then, my quality of life has drastically improved.

     With the sudden disappearance of piles and piles of schoolwork, my daily schedule became a lot more balanced. Suddenly, I could regularly get eight hours of sleep, do the manageable amount of homework I was assigned, have time to eat three decent meals a day, exercise for an hour or so, and still have plenty of time left over to actively pursue my own interests, which had been shoved to the back of my figurative closet for quite a while. I found my new favorite TV show, got to go on a daily 10-mile bike ride with my sister, and overall, could just relax more. The point of all this is to truly express that despite the disastrous global effects of COVID-19, it has actually forced me to reset my lifestyle to a much healthier manner.

     Now, I am by no means in favor of COVID-19. It’s one of the most upending things to happen on this planet in decades. What I am trying to convey is that sometimes it takes drastic events to force us to realize that we need to rethink our lives and how we are managing them. Without a pandemic to force me to sit at home with little to do for weeks, I probably wouldn’t have realized how unhealthy my lifestyle had become. I had gotten to the point where I was spending all my time working towards future goals, and had stopped considering what I could do to improve my life at that moment. So while I strongly detest