If you’re a student at Penn you likely know how hard it is to catch a break from all of your commitments and schoolwork. After all, the reason why most of us are here is that we’ve been overachievers our entire lives. Whether that means captaining the tennis team to a state championship or crushing the competition in meaningless NHS elections we could never lose, it’s just simply not in our DNA. Unlike other people, our faces are chronically plastered with a “unless I look like my Linkedin headshot 24/7, the world is going to end” expression- also known as Penn Face.  But despite this, Penn is in stiff competition with other strains of Ivy, ranking below the likes of Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and Columbia. The (occasionally one-sided) rivalry between these elite schools to be first in everything is still alive and well- but as we know, it’s all about whose got the most heart. And in this past week alone, Penn students have shown that they will very much go above and beyond.

As has happened many times with COVID, we are learning so much about ourselves! Namely that the proud, Fighting Quakers will raise the bar regardless of what record they are setting. While other school’s students played it safe and stuck with the more conservative strategy of social distancing and self-isolation, Penn’s students have decided that approach isn’t worthy of a winner’s mentality. With their eyes right on the prize and masks left in their rooms, our student body at Penn has made it their mission to rank highest in positivity rate week after week. Undaunted by the challenge of the quiet period, Penn’s freshmen have forged ahead to dorm and frat parties, as it was time to take a break from breaking academic records and move on to breaking public health records. Go Quakers!