Gallery • 5 Photos

Submitted Brianna Tang

Since restaurants reopened for dine-in over the summer of 2020, I have tried many new restaurants around the Boston area, both casually and as a photographer. Over the past two years, the restaurant industry has suffered greatly due to the pandemic.

Almost two years have passed since the start of the pandemic in March 2020; from thinking it would be a free two-week vacation in sophomore year, to it being months away from my high school graduation, I have both adapted to “pandemic life” and grown tired of talking about it.

Over the first few months of the pandemic, I turned to baking and online shopping to fill the void of isolation. As someone who has never baked from scratch before, this process consisted of many failures, and eventually a few successes. I learned how to make banana bread, brown butter chocolate chip cookies, egg tarts and Japanese milk bread (third time’s the charm). The days seemed to last forever, but before we knew it, the weather warmed up, cases began to decline and we slowly adjusted to living with the pandemic.

Sometimes I forget that the “milestones” of my high school years have all occurred amidst a global pandemic. I got my driver’s license, turned my creative hobby of food photography into a part-time job and submitted all of my college applications. I took a trip to New York City with my family over the summer, volunteered at my summer camp, which was finally able to run in-person, and took a day trip to Parlee Farms with my closest friends in the fall.

I’ve learned to prioritize myself and find joy in the small things: making breakfast and organizing my room on a Sunday morning, getting my nails done after minor inconveniences and getting Chick-fil-A way too many times a week. 

 Mask wearing has become second nature to me (I really don’t see why so many people complain about it); besides the obvious pandemic reasons, I no longer have to worry about faking a smile in pictures – it’s a win-win. I recognize I have been privileged to have a relatively smooth pandemic experience, but moving forward, I would rather find joy in a pandemic world than constantly find ways to return to the past “normal.”