Last year’s school year was filled with COVID and quarantining, and this year’s is full of… little colds? In each of my seven classes throughout the day, there is at least one person’s immune system trying to fight off a nasty bug going around. The sniffles, heavy mouth breathing, and periodic cough attacks do not go unnoticed by students trying to learn (and hey, I’m probably that kid in most of my classes so I’m sorry). In all seriousness, why is everyone sick?

My best guess as to why everyone is fighting a cold is because everyone is back to normal festivities. For over a year, everyone has been spread apart, masked up, and not attending social events in order to not catch the virus. However, the start of school and football season seems to cause people to forget we have not been this close nor done all of these things since the winter of 2020. 

Schools are also notorious for being germ infested buildings. Any surface you may think is sanitized and clean will still be full of germs that cannot wait to attach onto your fingers and ruin the rest of your week with a never ending runny nose. Not to mention our hallways at Elkhorn South look like sardines trying to move around a tightly packaged can. You are lucky to have more than three inches between you and someone you have never seen before who could easily be sick as well. 

These past few weeks have been hard on my immune system to say the least. I don’t remember the last day I could fully breathe out of both nostrils or say three sentences without coughing like a sick dog. I have been so lucky to not only get a bug going around the school but my allergies have decided to hit me with a bus as well!! The amount of allegra I have taken in the past two days is definitely not safe, but it is slightly helping my very runny nose.

Fall allergies are not new and I have always been affected by them in some way. I believe that other people have been struck hard by this season’s allergies as well and is another factor in the continuous sniffles in class.

No matter what, the students at Elkhorn South are getting the ultimate immune system test this fall. If anyone can tell me that they have not missed one period of the day because they felt like their throbbing headache would not allow them to learn anything, I would applaud them.