Students were surprised on March 7 as Gov. Mike DeWine announced schools K-12 would close for three weeks due to the spread of the coronavirus. They ran home, looking forward to the extra long spring break, but the excitement quickly came to an end as the coronavirus spread. For the remainder of the school year, students were confined to their homes with little to do.
However, many people found creative ways to stay positive during this time by developing new hobbies and making fun purchases.
Junior Ru Sivaraman said she started a project to combine her Indian heritage and her love of cooking.
“I kept trying to make these recipes from my mom’s cookbooks, but they didn’t work out in many cases,” Sivaraman explained. “They required outdated equipment, and ingredients were listed in metric and in Indian English, making them inaccessible.”
Sivaraman said the solution to her problem was to create her own food blog, called Moreghee, where she updated old Indian recipes for modern, Western kitchens. She took this task up on her own but with her family’s support. She said that her food blog can help Americans cook Indian dishes without worrying about messing them up.
“Most of the time, Americans don’t make Indian food because of how difficult it is,” she explained.
Senior Lucy Rosen took up tie-dying and turned it into a personal business, called DO or DYE.
“I decided to take on tie-dying initially due to my boredom during quarantine but then got creative and decided it could be successful to sell sets,” Rosen said.
A set of sweatpants and a sweatshirt is $89. Individually, a sweatshirt or pants are $49. She added that she is running the business on her own, and while she took out a loan from her dad to pay for the necessities, she is working on paying it back now.
She added that she will continue to run her business after quarantine because of how successful it is.
“I definitely don’t regret it because it’s a large trend right now, and I’m getting a lot of business,” she said.
Sophomore Grace Elliott explained that she decided to get into a trend over quarantine: at-home workouts.
Elliott said that she watched videos by Chloe Ting, an Australian fitness Youtuber who gained many followers over the break with her free workout videos. She also said that the videos she worked out to on Youtube were a good alternative to going to the gym, which was shut down during quarantine. Elliott explained that she wanted to do something productive over quarantine.
“My track and club soccer seasons had been canceled, so I wanted to have something active to do since I love working out,” she said.
Elliott also added that it was a good way to stay in touch with friends.
“I did it with my friends…over Facetime,” she said. “It was a fun activity to do since we couldn’t see each other in person.”
Freshman Dylan Goldberg said he bonded with his family through a purchase of a board game.
“I went to my grandparents’ house and bought their old Mahjong board,” he explained. “They taught my mother and I how to play.”
Mahjong is a Chinese game played with four people. There are 144 tiles, and you need to make a certain sequence with 14 tiles to win.
He added that playing the game helped him bond with his grandparents and kept him busy for a few hours.
“I will continue to play for a long time, and I encourage anyone to learn it,” he said.
Junior Alex Barnes said quarantine convinced his parents to adopt a new kitten.
“My family decided it was the perfect time to get a kitten since we had so much extra time to spend together,” he explained.
He said it was also the ideal time for his brother to get his own cat.
“When I was my brother’s age, I got a cat for my birthday. We figured that now was a better time than ever to get another cat for him,” Barnes said.
The kitten’s name is Tiggy, and she gets along very well with the previous family cat, Barnes added.
Elliott reflects back on how she thought she made good decisions over her break.
“I’m thankful for the amount of time quarantine gave me because I was able to relax, spend time with family and discover new things I can do at home,” Elliott said.
