“Good morning!” “What did the teacher just say?” “Can I borrow a pencil?” These are things that could be easily said between classmates in a classroom, but recently, masks have made such easy things a little difficult.

Covid-19 has changed everyone’s lives, often in small ways that weren’t expected. For example, wearing masks in schools has made it difficult for students to talk, quietly, amongst themselves during class. “Part of understanding someone is reading their lips, and you can’t do that with masks”, adds in Greta Boecher, a sophomore here at Elkhart-East. A quiet class may be for the better from a teacher’s point of view, but in a lot of ways, the effects for the students are different. 

Besides talking to classmates, other things not as noticeable have been affected. For example, coordinating a cute outfit with a mask is not an easy–nor fun–task. Not to mention, high schoolers going on dates has become a great deal more difficult, with a lot of things closed down.

Although it is easy to see the negatives of this situation, one big positive seems to stand out. Cheating has become a lot harder since masks and social distancing. “You’ll probably get caught because chances are, you’ll have to whisper, ‘what did you say?’ a bunch of times,” Boecher jokes. Getting those easy good grades has apparently become a lot more challenging for cheaters!

After all of the difficulties that masks have created so far, what will the rest of the school year be like? Will students be wearing masks for the whole year? Will there be graduation? One thing is for certain, if there is a prom, it’ll be a masquerade!