Life Between the Lines

I woke up this morning with a mild fever, sore eyes, and a shoulder that felt like mashed meat. Yesterday, I received my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, a vaccine that has represented this senior year. Two years ago, I never could have imagined ending my high school experience in the middle of a pandemic, but as we've all learned, expectations are mere guesses about the future, and unexpected events can wipe out decades worth of expectations. I think these changing expectations (read: I was overconfident about the future heading into high school) have marked my high school "journey," coming in with ideas and ideals that have been warped and morphed. Classes like English have changed the way I view literature; literature is not only a way for us to learn about characters and plots but also a way for us to learn about ourselves, the world, and the universe as a whole. At the risk of sounding cliché, everything we learn and everything that exists is interconnected — separ...