We offered students the opportunity to share their thoughts about the impact of CDL during the Covid crisis.   This is one of those submissions.  – Publisher

To My Parents and Teachers,

To say that 2020 has been stressful lately would be quite the understatement. When people were talking about what life might be like in 2020, I don’t think they saw something like this coming. First and foremost, I highly doubt that most people thought that we’d be facing a global pandemic that not only endangers many people but is extremely easy to spread. And with hundreds of thousands of people dead or dying, it’s only natural to feel dejected. Especially since the number of cases only seem to be getting higher in America. 

But to be honest, the virus doesn’t just affect us the way you may think. The consequence of such a virus running loose hasn’t just affected people directly, but indirectly as well. For example, the lockdowns. The way we live now has been thoroughly uprooted and tossed to the side as we scramble to do what we can to survive. I think that the virus has especially affected us teens if I have to be honest. And sure, we may have a better chance against the virus than our senior citizens, but Covid-19 has affected us far more than just the direct way. Let me explain how the virus has personally affected me. 

As you may or may not know, I haven’t been directly impacted by the virus. Neither I nor my family has been infected with Covid-19 yet. And as far as I know, no extended family has either. But despite that, I feel that the virus has really affected my life enough to warrant writing about. As you are all aware, schools have been shut down in order to stop the spread of Covid-19. Back when I was near the end of my sophomore year, we were sent home. We didn’t know when we were going to be coming back, but I certainly didn’t care. I think a lot of people, including me, felt happy to finally get a break from school. But as time passed on, it felt a bit…wrong. Sure I was happy to be out of school, but it just didn’t feel right. I remember feeling worried that school would be entirely canceled for the rest of the year. And this is coming from someone who doesn’t particularly enjoy school. Then we were told that school was, in fact, canceled for the entire rest of the school year. Sort of. We still had to participate in “online classes” in order to pass our classes. Although to be fair, they were a lot different than our online classes now. We didn’t use Google Meet and the most interaction we had with our teachers was through emails and pre-recorded videos. But that was understandable, considering that everything hadn’t been quite figured out yet. And to be frank, I kind of struggled with completing my assignments. I did try to do them, of course, but it was difficult. I felt like I was distracted by everything, more so than when I was in an actual school. And I already struggled with completing my homework on time at regular school. So my problems were further exacerbated by being at home with a lot of things that I’d rather do than schoolwork. And while I ended up passing all my classes in the end, I still didn’t feel quite prepared for more distance learning.

And although I knew going back to in-person learning would be a bad idea, I still felt that I’d at least be a bit more productive. But unfortunately, we can’t always have our way in life. Because this school year, at least temporarily, we have been continuing to do distance learning. And while I feel the schedule itself is easy enough, it still doesn’t change the fact that I was still unprepared. I was most certainly not ready to do online school full time and I wish I was. If I had been more active in completing my assignments last year, then maybe I’d feel more prepared. But I wasn’t and now all I can do is grit my teeth and will myself to do work when I sometimes don’t even want to get out of bed. I feel that compared to anything else that’s happened during this pandemic and 2020, school has to be the one thing that’s impacted my mental health the most. I feel stressed a lot about school work. It may be easy to do, but it’s hard to actually do it. I just feel like the motivation isn’t there and I continue to feel unmotivated until the last minute. Then I feel even more stressed because of all the work I have to do. Because I have so much work to do, I might end up not doing it because it’s too overwhelming. This feeds into a vicious cycle that ends with me doing all my work in one or two days. I wish I could stop this, but it’s not easy when I have such low motivation and too many distractions. But the most I can do is learn from my mistakes this quarter and try my best to not repeat them in my next classes. I just wish you all could understand this and that sometimes it’s hard to do my best. I have a lot of high expectations from you all, and it’s a little stressful to try to meet them all during these turbulent times. But the most I can do is keep my head above water and convey my feelings to you all. If you can understand how I feel, then that’s good. It doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t do work. I just want to let you all understand how much 2020 has affected me and my mental health. And to be honest, I’m worried that things aren’t going to get better. A lot of people believe that. However, that kind of thinking isn’t productive. Even if the future doesn’t look too bright, the best thing we can do is face it together. Then maybe we’ll be able to get through this.