The halls are hectic. The parking lot with no empty spaces. Cars all along the street. Swarms of students crossing the streets for lunch. The cafeteria filled with laughter, joy, and normality. Students and staff, we are back! 

Before we came back full time in person, there were always available parking spaces in the lot. Your spot was always available in the mornings at sophomore parking and if you left, it was always there waiting for you to return. You never had to come 20 minutes early to find a spot. You could even come 20 minutes late and there would still be a spot. Now you have to find a spot and possibly walk a possibly far distance to get from your car to school, or you have to drive in circles around the parking lot to find an open spot. The parking lots are crazy, but the cafeteria is no different.

You walk into the cafeteria and there are open seats waiting for you. Your friends didn’t have to save your seat because you had an open there waiting. That was before the return to full-time in person. Now you have to go to lunch and hope that there is a seat open somewhere in either the cafeteria or the old study center or the library or outside. There are so many options of places to sit, but very few open seats. Gathered around the tables there are groups standing trying to decide where they could all fit today or if they have to split up this time. The lines at Chipotle, Einstein Bros., Starbucks, Subway, Shawarma, and even King Soopers are out the doors and down the isles long. The crosswalk is constantly busy during lunch with groups of students waiting. The halls are no different.

There are people everywhere you look. It’s like rush hour traffic. It stops and goes and is slow-moving. The one-way halls are not helpful to the chaos. Getting from one class to another can take even longer now with the chaos of passing periods with the one-way halls. The swarm of students going from the cafeteria to the halls to class seems to continuously grow and make everything slower. It’s like being back at school normally, but with one-way halls and more clusters of people.

Being back brings back a sense of normality. The busy halls, the long lines, the overfilled tables at lunch, the school zone light flashing every weekday, and the light always being red at the crosswalk. After a little more than a year of our new, and hopefully temporary, “normal”, we are starting to get back to the old normal. Hanging out with our friends on the weekends and after school. Group projects in class. Sports being continued. School activities. Things are starting to go back to the way they were a year ago.