How to socialize and social distance

WRITING BY ANNA BAKER | GRAPHIC BY JUANA GARCIA

The coronavirus pandemic has been going on for almost about 9 months and although vaccines are starting to roll out, we still haven’t seen the end of it. You’re free to see your friends still but gathering in groups is still risky. If you want to still socialize with your friends safely, you will have to do it from a distance. Fortunately, in this day and age, there are many sociallydistant fun activities you can do safely with your friends.

One activity that can be good to do with a group of friends is Dungeons and Dragons. Dungeons and Dragons is a tabletop fantasy role playing game, and it’s a game most of us have probably heard of before. You choose and create a character and then follow the Dungeon Master’s storyline, making choices to fight battles, raid villages, etc. It’s a game that can be pretty much anything you want it to be. Many people are hardcore and will play for hours on end, remaining in character. However, you don’t have to play for long sessions, or even have to remain in character the whole time. It can just be an excuse for friends to get together and socialize.

What’s great about the game is that it can totally be played remotely. You don’t need to be in a room with someone to play it, so you can have sessions over Zoom or Discord. If you don’t have dice ,you don’t have to worry! There’s a website online called dndbeyond.com where you can roll dice, choose characters and more. That site has everything you need to be able to play the game. It may be a little hard to get used to at first, but if you’re with a good group of friends, navigating the game should be fine. It’s an activity you can do, no matter how far away from each other you are.

Games are a great way of socializing with friends without actually being physically near them. Among Us is a great game to play with friends or even a campus club. It’s a game where like in the game Mafia, you try to find a traitor amongst the group. It’s super fun to play with friends. And what’s great is that it’s completely free on the Apple store! There are a lot of online games you can play with friends like Drawful, Cards Against Humanity Online and more.

With so much of our socializing, working, and free time taken up online, it might be nice to get out, safely that is. Many outdoor activities like frisbee or simply just playing a game of catch can be done while social distancing. Keep your masks on and have hand sanitizer on hand, but getting outside is good way to get exercise and change up your surrounding.

We’ve been in this pandemic for almost a year now and it can seem hopeless when trying to ease our boredom. However, there are plenty of ways to socialize with friends without risking safety. With vaccines beginning to be dispersed, hopefully we’ll be able to all meet our friends in person again, but until then we must do what we can.