The faint ticking of a wall clock; the seemingly constant "ding" of incoming emails; the monotonous voice of newscasters reading daily death statistics on TV. This is life in quarantine: mundane, repetitive, and for many, lonely. For the last eighteen months, the COVID-19 pandemic has confronted us with an unprecedented kind of social isolation, one that has altered everyone's relationships with family, friends, partners, and co-workers. Across media outlets, mental health experts have stressed the importance of maintaining these relationships, even from a distance. And we've done just that. We've had birthday parties and happy hours on Zoom. We've sat in each other's driveways six feet apart and masked. We've camped outside hospitals waiting for the newest addition to the family, or to support loved ones as they fight COVID.

However, there's one relationship that has gone largely unmentioned — arguably the most important of them all — the relationship we have with ourselves.

With such a disruption in our routines and social lives, the relationship we have to ourselves has inevitably changed. Without the distraction of packed schedules and busy social lives, we've all been forced to spend more time alone with our thoughts in the last eighteen months than many of us have in our lifetimes. What happens when you're forced to stop and take a good look at yourself and who you are? Do you like what you see? For some, this has been an opportunity for self-discovery and improvement, or a much-needed pause to reevaluate what's important, but for others, it's been really difficult.

For Lauren Burnette, a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh, the pandemic brought to light things in her personal life that she hadn't been confronted with before. For the first few months, she lived at home with her parents and four siblings, while she studied for the MCAT and applied to medical schools.

"Being home and studying for the MCAT was a really isolating experience. It's a very individualized thing anyway, but all of my friends were hours away from me, so it was hard."

Forced to spend this time alone, she reflected on how she's dealt with her mental health in the past.

"I have bad anxiety, and I didn't realize that I don't let myself sit in my feelings very much," says Burnette. "Having all of this alone time unintentionally allowed me to do that, which was kind of a negative thing, but I think also a positive because I've been able to learn how to take care of myself and not put all my problems off by only taking care of other people. Before COVID I don't think I would have had the time or necessity to figure that out."

She also was able to reflect on the way she wants to be perceived by others.

"I've been more okay with not being perfect," she explains. "Only the people that are closest to me know the things that I struggle with, and before COVID I was not open to talking about my struggles because I wanted to put on this persona that I was perfect and had everything together. This has been a really good thing for me to go through before medical school because now I can be more honest with the people in my life."

Abigail Sheusi, also a Northeastern fifth-year who studies civil engineering, struggled with the amount of alone time that Covid created.

"At first I was home with my parents, with no siblings, and then I lived alone on campus with no roommates." She struggled to find meaningful ways to fill her time without the social interactions she was used to. "I like to be alone, but I don't like not having the option to see other people. I had too much free time." Rather than allow this time to just pass by, she used it to discover new hobbies and interests, and also to reflect on what's most important. "I learned how to crochet, I made candles, I did a lot of crafting. And I realized I need structure in my life. I didn't like having a full day where I didn't know what I was supposed to do."

Now, she has a newfound appreciation for the people in her life. "I appreciate the time I can see other people and my family more. There's still family I haven't seen yet, so I look forward to seeing them more than I did before the pandemic. I just appreciate everything more."

For Leah Saifi, a fifth-year Northeastern design student, this time of isolation was hard, but also transformative. Living alone for much of quarantine, she had to learn to deal with hardships without the support she was used to.

"My life was really shifting, which was difficult to battle on my own because I didn't know what was going on and I didn't know how to handle it." A lifelong athlete, she chose to leave the track team. "All of a sudden I was struggling to figure out who I was outside of this one hobby. I was always an athlete first, and as soon as that was taken away from me, I was like, oh my god, who am I?"

She was left with something new: time.

"You only have a finite amount of time, and I was spending so much of it doing this one thing, and all of a sudden it's gone. What am I going to replace it with?"

She reflected on life outside of athletics. "I never saw myself on the same level as my peers- it was like a kind of impostor syndrome where I had gotten into this program because I found another way in that wasn't academics. And before, I was okay with knowing that I wasn't on the same level academically, but now it's not justifiable. I didn't want to feel this impostor syndrome anymore."

Using this period of isolation for self-reflection, she was able to find self-worth.

"I have a lot more to offer to the world than just being an athlete. Now I see myself as being with my peers instead of below them. Maybe Covid was a much needed awakening."