107 The Story of How I Lost My High School Years AND My Graduation

Anonymous

When the COVID-19 pandemic was first announced, it was on a typical March afternoon, and I very clearly remember being in my grade 11 afterschool band practice. The news broke out relatively quickly and everyone was celebrating the fact that we had a 2-week break from school because of the pandemic. During the pandemic, my family and I stayed at home in Toronto. When the pandemic first got announced, I was 16 years old (about to turn 17 in a month) and was in grade 11.  

I remember the pandemic being a very uncertain time with waves of full and partial lockdowns. Initially, when the pandemic was first announced, I was in the middle of my grade 11 band practice, and everyone was celebrating the start of a 2-week spring break. However, in the middle of the break in March 2020, the government announced that there will be a full lockdown, which extended our 2-week break until further notice. It turned out the rest of the school semester will be fully online, so I spent the rest of the next few months attending online classes and meetings. I had literally no more contact with my peers and classmates, other than seeing them through a computer screen. In grade 12, our school divided students into different cohorts (either cohort A or cohort B), and each week, only one cohort will attend school in person while the other half will attend classes online. Students were to screen themselves for symptoms every day before coming to school if it was their in-person week, and if they have symptoms, they were to self-isolate and not come to class that week. So, teachers made accommodations and also broadcasted their lectures/ classes on Zoom/ Google Meet as well. In terms of day-to-day changes, I remember restaurants being closed completely for a period of time, but eventually lockdowns were eased so people were able to dine in and shop, but only if they wore a mask. I also remember my parents shifting their grocery and shopping needs to online by using apps such as Instacart and Amazon. Our family practiced social distancing when we did go out, and for a period of time, we ate dinner separately. When one of us got symptoms, we used PCR testing kits that we got from pharmacies and my school to test for COVID-19 and had to self-isolate until we no longer tested positive. 

Honestly, I initially enjoyed virtual schooling for the sake of my own comfort. I liked the idea of being able to wake up 5 minutes before class, log on to Zoom, and be taught while sitting with my PJs still on. However, I think my quality of education was definitely impacted. I did not find any of the lessons as engaging as before, and sometimes the poor Wi-Fi, webcam, and sound quality can make it very difficult to learn. The idea of being behind a screen and in your pajamas really decreased my motivation to focus my time and energy on learning. Because of this, I definitely think the long-term impacts would be our loss of motivation for school, our lack of understanding on certain academic areas, and also our addiction and excessive use of screens and social media. 

I quite literally missed out on my graduation and prom. The pandemic was at its peak when I was in grade 12, and there were still lockdowns in place to the point where we could not have social gatherings, so both our senior prom and graduation ceremony were cancelled. Instead, we had a pre-recorded online graduation and had a “drive-thru” graduation where we booked a timeslot to return our textbooks and also take a picture in front of our school. Additionally, I was part of my grade 12 music band as well, and each year, the seniors had the opportunity to travel abroad to play at a large concert hall. It was well known that our year was the year where we were to go to the Czech Republic for a music festival, but this was also cancelled because of the pandemic. This was literally THE life event that I have always been looking forward to and something that I would remember for the rest of my life – and it was just horrible timing: our year was the only graduating class to have missed out on their prom and graduation night.  

I see the theme of blame very clearly based on my experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Right when the pandemic was announced, news and media sources were very quick to highlight everything about the virus that caused it, such as where the virus may have originated from. I heard many variations of how the virus was called, beyond the scientific name like SARS-CoV-2, such as the “Wuhan virus” or the “China virus.” These names were well publicized and used by many politicians (e.g. Donald Trump), which very obviously cast blame on a certain country and a group of people. I am myself Chinese, so hearing the virus being nicknamed as such made me incredibly uncomfortable and caused a lot of anger. Hearing notable politicians and news media outlets use these terms, as well as hearing them in public made me very uncomfortable to go outside or even show my face to others, in fear that I may be persecuted because of my ethnicity. I also feared that others may avoid me because of the way I look because my ethnicity and culture was so intimately tied to the virus. This was also the time where I started seeing stories and videos of East Asians being harassed verbally and physically, and also where I started seeing the Stop Asian Hate movement take off as well, and I think the pandemic was a big source of this.