Sitting in the lunch room surrounded by your friends, laughing with each other used to be the highlight of many Shorians day. It was a time to relax and just talk to friends who you haven’t seen since the morning.  Now, the lunchroom is full of kids listening to their headphones, sitting two to a table with little communication. They are quiet, boring and really odd.

Lunches are split this year between the gym and the cafeteria, and everyone sits facing one way. If you chose to sit in the cafeteria you sit in the corners of the tables with one other person, nowhere near each other. 

When you take a walk through the cafeteria or even the gym you can feel a sense of tension between the students sitting in the room because barely anyone speaks, and there is absolutely no getting up to walk around. 

Kylie Flanta, senior, says, “It’s hard and weird having to keep turning around just to hear my friends.” 

Our lunches are brought to us on a tray and handed to us in a bag or a styrofoam container.

“The only thing I do not like is that the crust is so hard on all the bread,” Abby Sample, freshman, said. 

Meghan Hermes, senior, says, “The lunches aren’t bad; they’re just different this year.” 

They bring around a trash can to you, so there is no need to get up; unless it’s to the bathroom, but even then, you’re only allowed to use specific ones.

There is no more finishing your lunch and wandering the hall with your friends until the bell rings, or standing in line for way too long to pick what food you want that day. There are only kids staring at their phones and cold lunches hand-delivered. 

There are plus sides to our lunches being distanced, we get a break from the masks, we can talk to the people around us mask-free, and the lunches are at no cost to the students.