As the weather gets warmer and cars become uninhabitable again, students are starting to make their summer plans. While safety measures are still in place, and the pandemic is not over, people have more freedom with the vaccine to do things, such as seeing people and going places, that weren’t options before. 

Junior Amanda Li said that many things have been different online from in-person, including summer band camp. Summer band camp is a time during the summer when the band meets to practice and prepare a show. 

“I’m looking forward to having a summer band season because last year, our summer season got canceled,” Li said. “Not fully canceled; we did virtual, but that’s not the same. So I’m excited for our summer band thing to start preparing for our fall show.”

Freshman Ramona Gonzalez said she is looking forward to many things this summer, starting with being able to get vaccinated due to the Pfizer vaccine’s emergency use authorization for 12 to 15-year-olds. Things like sports and travel, which may not have been available last summer, are also coming back. 

“During the summer, I plan on being vaccinated,” Gonzalez said. “I also plan on playing in the softball summer league with a few LASA softball people and then some people from the LBJ team. Also, I can see some of the family I haven’t seen in about two years due to COVID-19 now that we can travel more safely. I’m also looking forward to hopefully doing some cross country summer training for the next season.”

Freshman Lucy Pigford said she’s planning to travel this summer. However, in addition to staying safe on planes, she has some concerns about the availability of things like rental cars after a year of not many people traveling. 

“I am planning to go to Utah, and we’re flying,” Pigford said. “So I definitely think that with social distancing, and that kind of thing, that might be kind of an issue, plane capacity. I have heard that some rental car companies have sold all their cars to get money because last year, no one was using them, but now there’s more demand, and they have no cars, so that might be a problem for us.”

Not only has COVID-19 affected plans because of the preparation needed to take proper safety precautions; it has also had some big long-term effects. Places have had to shut down because of decreased customer demand amid COVID-19. Unfortunately, these places may have been part of people’s summer plans. For Gonzalez, it was her summer camp that got shut down due to COVID-19. 

“I do think that COVID-19 will change my summer plan in some ways because my summer camp got shut down forever due to COVID-19 and how hard it was on the camp,” Gonzalez said. “I was planning on going there.”

Overall, Li said that she’s excited for this summer because while it might not be fully back to what we think of as normal, there are a lot more opportunities to do things. According to her, it’s different from last summer, and we have come a long way. 

“I’m glad to see our lives start to go more normal than it was this last year,” Li said. “I think we’ve come a long way from the beginning of the pandemic. I’m excited to see more people do more things and have more opportunities that we didn’t get to last summer.”