Weeks strives to be more social
April 21, 2021
Alex Weeks 10 has come to the realization that he wants to do more in his life. Once COVID hit, he realized everything that he was missing out on in life. He’s now pushing to be more social and to do more activities.
Weeks was entirely online during the first semester of the 2020-2021 school year. He found it was hard to maintain both a personal life and a work balance.
“I experienced a lot of burnout last semester because I did full online school, so it was kind of hard for me to juggle what was going on in my life and all these classes that I had to keep up myself. So I definitely struggled with everything I was doing,” Weeks said.
This semester, Weeks is on a hybrid schedule where his core classes are online, but electives are in person. Coming back to school has helped him rebuild his social life as well as allowed him to get some consistency again.
“I don’t really see that many friends outside of school, so it’s nice to be in school for that social life aspect,” Weeks said, “It’s also just a thing where it gives me a little bit more structure to my day because I know that I’m going to go to school, I’m going to see my friend, get some work done. Where as I wouldn’t know that otherwise with totally online school.”
When Weeks went completely online, he felt withdrawn from people, only being able to focus on trying to maintain the classes he was taking. Because of this, he’s making more of an effort to connect with friends more often.
“It was already difficult to have a social life and stuff because of COVID, but I think that going full online just made it harder,” Weeks said, “There was never really a time where I could get out and talk to people.”
COVID has pushed Weeks to want to do more with his time. He realized everything that he was missing out on, and wants to change that now.
“I regret not doing more before COVID hit. I wasn’t involved in a ton of things before my freshman year, which was when COVID hit,” Weeks said, “If I could go back and tell my past self something, it would be to join more clubs.”
In an effort to achieve this goal, Weeks wants to start up a cooking club once it is safe to do so. He was originally planning on starting it in his freshman year, but the pandemic interrupted the plans.
“I was planning on starting a cooking club in freshman year, with a couple of my friends, so once COVID is over I definitely want to continue and start that up, and have start having meetings for it,” Weeks said.
Although Weeks wants to start making changes to his social life and activities, COVID makes it challenging to do so, having caused so many activities to be cancelled.
“I take private lessons for trombone, but so far that’s really all that I’ve done as far as extracurriculars,” Weeks said, “The two things that I was doing that I can’t really do now, are choir at my church, and the Sliders Trombone Group, which I can’t do because it hasn’t gotten back together yet.”
Despite being back in school around friends, Weeks still has a few days where his social battery runs low. Though he pushes through it to the best of his ability, and continues to try to improve his social activity.
“There’s definitely some days where I just have no motivation to be around other people, but I’m definitely trying to make more of an effort to put myself out there more,” Weeks said.