New Years Resolution by Berklee

New Years Resolution by Berklee - December 2020 Scholarship Essay

Growing up my New Years resolution was always pretty much the same; study more for school, work out more, etc. In recent times I've decided to make a change to my New Years resolution. Back on March 13, 2020 my life like many others was flipped upside down by Covid-19. Although in 2009 the world was impacted by the swine flu pandemic I was a kid and was hardly impacted by H1N1. For the past nine months the world has been fighting another beast.

Covid-19 has been unlike anything I have ever dealt with before. For the first nine weeks after March 13th I did not leave my house what so ever. I stayed home as instructed and tried to live my life as I would. It took me a few weeks to realize that I couldn't just act as everything was normal because it wasn't everything had changed. I was no longer in school and spending all of my time at home. After I made that realization the days started to blend together and I felt as if I was living the same day over and over again. It was exhausting I would wake up and do the same thing day after day.

That is why I've chosen to change my New Years resolution. I have now decided in the New Year when life is back to normal I will live in the moment and be more present. After being locked down for what seemed like a lifetime I now want to be more present. It was so easy to just lock myself away during those nine weeks it sort of became a habit to just shut myself off. I felt as if nothing I did really mattered, but then a flip switched and I remembered that pandemics end and one day life will go back to normal. From then on I decided that when life is normal I am going to live it to the fullest. No more "oh well I can do it next week" because you never know what's going to happen there may not be next week. The pandemic taught me that life is all about experiences whether that experience is participating in class more or studying longer for test. When you get the chance to have experiences and make memories you need to take them because at any moment you may lose that chance.