The pandemic is leaving everyone with something to be desired, stealing away important moments and milestones that will never be fulfilled. For RV Freshman Breanna Carr, the heavy feeling of missing out is prevalent on a daily basis.

“I feel like I missed out on a lot of things that normally freshmen get when they’re in school all year round,” Carr said. “We missed homecoming; that was a big one that I was looking forward to. And having a big group of friends. We don’t really have that anymore because we only go once a week and it’s only a couple kids that go in person in your classes and it’s really just different. And it’s harder because you’re virtual and you’re not really learning because you’re sitting on a computer basically 24 hours a day.”

RV’s return to school plan for the 2020-2021 school year has given students the option to opt into a one-day-a-week cohort schedule. Before cases began to rise, students attended school socially distanced on their assigned day. Classes run for about half the normal amount of time so that virtual and in-person students learn during the same period of time. As for now, the school has mandated all virtual classes again due to a climb in cases, and is hoping to return in the next month or so.

“It’s definitely something that I don’t really enjoy,” Carr says of virtual learning. “I’m not learning one-on-one with the teacher and not getting the time to really talk to them and ask a bunch of my questions. I just feel like I’m not really learning all that much for being on the computer for hours…  Sometimes it’s good to have one-day-a-week, but most times it’s not. On some subjects you don’t really understand and getting that one day is not really enough to understand what they’re teaching. It’s okay I guess, though learning like this doesn’t make me feel great. It honestly makes me feel a little stressed out, but other than that, I guess it’s okay.” 

Besides feeling robbed of her freshman year, Carr also expressed her loss of enjoyment in many extracurriculars the school offers outside of the classroom. She is an active member, and now two year veteran, of the RV Marching Band and was the manager of the freshman boys’ soccer team.

“It’s totally different,” Carr said. “The soccer team really didn’t have a season this year because a bunch of people got COVID… most of their games got postponed or cancelled.”

Both the soccer team and the band’s seasons ended abruptly when the school went all virtual again at the beginning of November, as the school expressed it felt it necessary to keep students home as cases began to rise. All sports practices and games were cancelled, leaving both the band and soccer team with nothing, as their shortened seasons were already coming to a close.

“Last year we definitely got to do a lot more because there was no pandemic,” Carr said, describing her experience in marching band. “I think that we didn’t have a real season so it wasn’t like before, like normal. It was better than I thought; it wasn’t great, but it was okay… I just think we should have had a real ending to the season. I feel like we missed out on a bunch of our major competitions. I was hoping we would be able to have at least another in-person rehearsal instead of just getting an email that the season was over. Next year hopefully won’t be as bad and hopefully we’ll have more control over what happens during the season. But really, I’m going to continue next year. I’m not going to let what happened this year stop me. I just wish we could have been told about what we could or couldn’t do so we would have known what to look forward to. We really missed out…”

With high hopes for the second semester, and the promise to maintain a positive attitude, Carr is hoping this feeling of missing out will disappear. As for her freshman year? Who knows how the story will end.

Carr said, “All I can do is wait until things go normal. Until then I’m afraid I’ll just be missing out.”