48 From Studies to Screens, My Covid-19 Experience

Anonymous

I remember first hearing about COVID-19 from my brother and mom. I was in high school at the time in the first semester of grade 11. I was in the international baccalaureate program which meant that my number one concern at the time was school, school, and more school. I had a phone at the time, but a majority of my life was spent waking up, going to school, going home, then studying for school. At this point, I hadn’t really been a large user of the internet, I had no social media, didn’t really text anyone, or use my phone as most of my classmates had. I was not alone, but my use and dependency on my phone and the internet was non-existent, especially compared to now. This also meant that COVID, and all its occurrences around the world practically did not exist to me. While I heard murmurs about the virus spreading and causing mass shutdowns and problems in China, it didn’t mean much to me. It was another news event that was happening, like an earthquake which brought tragedy or tornado that tore through homes, while being a terrible occurrence it didn’t have any tangible detriment to me, and nor did I ever expect it to be. Then, one day COVID seemed to cross the border, and the first cases popped up in Ontario, near me because I lived near the airport. I thought to myself, “wow, it’s kind of crazy the virus has traveled so far,” and it had not crossed my mind at all about how it may affect me or what if it became widespread? I may seem carefree and somewhat oblivious to my surroundings, and I agree. School took up so much of my life I didn’t even consider any other issues or how it would impact my life, or even if it would impact school. 

As school progressed, the first case of COVID seemed to be a long time ago as I began my second semester. I still remember toilet paper of all things being gone from the local Costco, a wholesale supplier for groceries and other items. The response to this shortage by me and everyone surrounding me was kind of similar, no one needs that much toilet paper, and the panic is setting in. But for what? There were no other occurrences of COVID nor restrictions of any sort which were being implemented. At this point, COVID was like a ghost as it had no effect on my day-to-day life, but people were panicking and freaking out over it. “That won’t happen”, I couldn’t imagine anything changing in my life as I had already such a set routine as a student from kindergarten at the age of 4 until then. I was wrong, very wrong. In fact, when my chemistry teacher announced that school was ending early in second semester, I couldn’t believe it. It all just stopped. I had no school for the foreseeable future as the teachers told us that they would contact us about when it would resume. Long story short is that school didn’t resume, and I had lost half of my last grade 11 semester just sitting at home doing absolutely nothing. The teachers never started online school because they believed that returning to school was just around the corner. After about a month, they started to try and online teach, however resources were extremely limited. The caveat was that our marks for the courses couldn’t drop and only go up. I didn’t learn a single thing from this time. My parents had bought me a small dell laptop for schooling, and I remember that poor thing trying to survive the 8:00am to 4:00pm times of school. The fan would be blowing so hard inside, and it was hot to the touch, nearly impossible to type on by the end of the day. I had to get an actual, large fan to blow on my computer for extra cooling.

Since my workload was reduced by an immense amount due to COVID. I gained a lot of this thing called free time which I never had. I also had a laptop at the time which was new. So, the only logical answer was to start playing video games on my computer. My entry was a game called VALORANT. While I used to play a tiny bit of Minecraft, a sandbox survival game before, it was hardly considered a real game. VALORANT on the other hand was the real deal to me. At the same time, my other classmates were also facing the same issue of too much free time, and because of this we all converted to becoming gamers. I had convinced my parents to let me buy a personal computer that wouldn’t overheat and burn as hot as the sun, partly so I could play games with better experience, and partly because my fingertips hurt from the heat of the keyboard. 

My father objected, he said I only wanted to use it to play games and didn’t need it, however my mother agreed. Delighted to hear this, I began researching as much as I could about personal computers and everything about them. COVID had an extreme effect on everything, from groceries to jobs, and computer parts. I had made the decision to make my own personal computer and set up from scratch to save money. There was a large demand for personal computers due to lockdowns so pre-made computers were extremely expensive, however the individual parts weren’t so much. I went from not knowing anything about computers to being such a nerd about parts and computer building in such a short time. At some time during the summer my computer was built, and to my slight surprise, it worked without any hitches. My favorite part about it was how it didn’t burn like the sun when I would use it with a side benefit of my games looking like an actual smooth video compared to the PowerPoint presentation they looked like before. 

The online schooling continued into my last year of high school, grade 12. This was probably one of my favorite years in life as school was less work, but I was still doing well, I was in the luxury of my own home and could play video games all day and night. I also found friends in my high school that played as well and am glad to say that they are still my closest friends to this day and the memories we shared are ones I truly treasure to this day.

However, the naivety of games and online school did not shield me from everything. I am half-Chinese and Polish and a large identity of COVID in the Americas was, Chinese people were the cause and problem of it. Luckily, or maybe less luckily, I had access to the internet which gave me the opportunity to see all the opinions, hateful and helpful about COVID. I still remember firsthand the hatefulness and disgust that was brought towards Chinese. While I didn’t experience it personally as I was locked away in my room all the time, I saw it largely through the screen. Another core memory of this time was explaining to my father as to how the COVID virus probably wasn’t because Chinese people were so poor and famished that they would eat whatever wild animals. Or even that the virus was a Chinese secret weapon meant to destroy American economies. I had a lot of arguments with him at the time to say the least, where I was armed with the information of the internet. The immense blame om the Chinese for the virus and all its effects is still largely placed on the Chinese today, even those that live in another country. The mental heuristics and gymnastics used to blame a group for all the issues in their own life was something I saw all too often.