A Senior in High School
Thoughts on 2020
March 13th. I thought it was a joke. It was junior year and I was stressed; I needed the break. I thought it would all be over in a couple weeks and we would go back to normal. My AP Lang teacher stood over us on the last day of school, during CAASP testing, and told us we would not be going to school tomorrow and that we would likely not return until there was a vaccine: I didn’t believe her. The words “Pandemic” sprawled across every newspaper and every TV screen. “This will be in the history books, we are living through a phenomenon” they would say, but none of it felt real. I didn’t know anyone with this deadly disease so how was I supposed to rationalize it; how does one's life come to a complete stop by something that seems illusionary. One by one, week by week, everything ended. Week one, we can’t go to school. Week two, no gatherings over 25 people: no softball practice. Week three, no gathering over 15 people, no restaurants. Week four, no gatherings outside of your family: no friends. I was an only child, locked inside my house with my working parents: all of us itching to get out and escape from each other's conference calls. What does “shelter-in-place” even mean?
My one escape from school was the gym. If I’m stressed, I can go run on the treadmill, blasting music through my headphones and tune out the world. Gyms: closed. I had been studying for five months, taking practice tests every weekend and completely prepared to take the ACT: cancelled. To escape my boundless boredom, I began to bake with my first mission resulting in gluten free blueberry muffins. I needed baking soda, fresh blueberries, and sugar but as I wandered the aisles of Ralphs I soon realized everyone had the same idea. No fresh fruit, no baking supplies.
My life soon felt like I was stuck in the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day” where each day I woke up and repeated the same day over and over. At first, I was optimistic. That feeling slowly disappeared as each night, the news felt like a political competition cursed with the conspiracy “is Covid-19 even real?” floating behind the scenes. It felt like we were in a silent race: the top competitors, China, Italy, and the U.S all competing for the least recognition?
Five months in and I still don’t know anyone with Covid but I have gotten into a routine that I am comfortable with. My mental health is better than it has been in the last seventeen years without the social and academic stress of daily-interaction. While stuck at home, I’ve adapted to the cycle of online classes but discovered it increasingly harder to express myself. Despite the new difficulties, my elective class, photography, has challenged and pushed me to explore subject matter within the home. With no siblings and busy parents, I took my online photo assignments to new lengths, becoming both the photographer and the model. I discovered my inspiration within myself. I suddenly found I was able to move freely and express my recent emotions through my pictures. By the time I was confident and happy with my images I was five hours in and full of inspiration. Taking self portraits enabled me to see myself in a new light, and appreciate my body for what it was.
Although I admit my mental health is soaring, I still don’t fully understand how some people voluntarily do online home-schooling. I miss the atmosphere of the classroom--questions bouncing off the walls, teacher tangents that are totally relevant to the topic at hand, and random blaring announcements that seem to take longer than any tangent could. Zoom university is awkward, quiet, and unlearnable. The learning curve seems to stretch on for light-years, leaving students either too confused to focus or already thinking of the next assignment. Somehow, online school has made me more anxious as I find myself refreshing the calendar about 40 times just to make sure I am not missing the 11:59 deadline. No, we shouldn’t have opened school but yes the education system should have been more prepared (not the teachers).
After eighteen years of miserable schooling, I looked forward to that one semester, walking around campus with a chip on my shoulder looking down at my younger-self, cheering them on. This final year is meant to be the year you take a moment to turn around and be proud of the seventeen years of forced-struggle. Sitting at home, clicking on the next zoom link, refreshing my browser every 10 minutes doesn’t exactly feel like the senior year my young, elementary self thought of.
When this is all over I hope I can throw my computer in a pool and live off paper for at least the next year. Without the restraint of masks and hand sanitizer, I hope to get a job and go to a concert. Before I go off to college, I want to leave the country for the first time and experience memories that can’t be taught through the words of a textbook. I want to see other cultures, and experience other languages other than through my nightly news. Plainly, I just want to be able to properly visit the college that I will spend the next four years of my life at.
I hope that in the end, Covid-19 is a lesson for all. Whether it unknowingly makes the education system more modernized or teaches kids to appreciate the small things, quarantine is a time-period that will likely never happen again in a lifetime. Covid-19 sparked a revolution that was bound to happen and I am just grateful I got to live through it and not read it in another textbook down the line. We will never go back to “normal”--at least I hope not.