28 COVID-19: My Journey of Growth and Self-Acceptance

A.Y. Jun

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, I was halfway through my grade 10 year. I was 15 years old, and beyond excited to get 2 weeks off from school. I had always been a homebody, as I still am, and was ecstatic to be able to stay home and watch all the TV and movies I wanted. I spent those two weeks doing anything and everything I wanted – sleeping in, watching movies, baking sweet treats, spending time with my dog, and texting with my friends. My parents could not say anything about my “doing nothing all day” because they too were doing nothing all day. Schools closed mid-March and were expected to re–open by early April. Even when they announced that schools would remain closed for the next month, and then until the end of the year, I was still very happy that I would get to stay home every day. 

The problems began to arise once online schooling began. Since they announced that grades would remain unchanged until the end of the year, I thought it would be fine to sleep or go on my phone during class. I would go to bed super late, wake up to turn on Google Meet for attendance, go back to sleep, and do absolutely anything but pay attention during class time. Before the pandemic, I was a very dedicated student. I never skipped class, always paid attention, did all my homework every day, took time to understand all the content, and maintained straight A’s. I was quite good at subjects like math and science and enjoyed them as well, wanting to pursue careers in the field. During online school, I was slacking off due to the lack of consequences and began to fall behind. In the following year, I chose not to attend in-person/hybrid school and just decided to stay home all year once again. This is when I really saw the repercussions of my behaviour from the previous year. I could not focus on what the teachers were saying at all, and my grades began to drop, to the point where I had to drop one of my classes so that it would not affect my transcript for university applications. In grade 12, once we were fully transitioned back to regular schooling, I tried extremely hard to catch up on the previous year and a half of slacking off. I would go to the library after school every day to study, completed every single textbook question, go to my teachers during lunch time or after school to ask for extra help, and even took supplementary classes outside of school. Even all of this effort was not enough to bring my grades back up to the point they were at pre-pandemic, but I was able to get into the program I wanted at McMaster and succeed here.  

One of the main things that the pandemic really helped with was my identity and self-discovery. As an Asian Canadian immigrant, the pandemic really opened my eyes to all of the hatred and injustice in the world on an unfathomable scale. Since the virus originated in China, so many people, both online and in-person, were blaming East Asians for spreading the disease globally. On every possible social media platform, I saw comment sections flooded with anti-Asian hatred, some of which were deeply alarming and unsettling. One day, I was walking my dog in my neighbourhood, my first time going outside in weeks, and someone shouted anti-Asian slurs at me. I immediately went back home and did not leave my house for a while after that. Though this time of my life was very scary, I was also able to find supportive communities online. This period brought so many Asian Americans/Canadians together, and it was nice to be a part of such a rich culture. This was also a time where I was able to explore my identity as a queer woman. I had been aware of my queerness since middle school and had a few queer friends in real life, but the online community during this time was what really helped me come to terms with my identity and feel comfortable in it. I was surrounded by so much love and support for the queer community during this period that even now, years later, I get surprised by how much homophobia, transphobia, and general bigotry there is in the world. While there was a lot of uncertainty and fear in the world during this time, these online communities were a place of hope and light, which is one of the things I miss most about this time.  

While my online space was sort of a safe haven for me, my home life was not. I never really got along with my parents as they have always had quite contrarian ideologies to mine. They are very religious, conservative, and unaccepting of people who are different to them, while I am a very outspoken atheistic leftist. They never accepted my points of view on any social issues because I was a child and that meant that they always knew better than me. This, as well as being forced into the house with them 24/7 with no breaks to go to school or work, led to a lot of arguments and discomfort. This took a huge toll on my mental health, and I experienced horrible thoughts constantly. I was extremely depressed, and I had no support from the people who were supposed to be my biggest supporters. During this time, I tried my best to isolate myself from them and spent most of my days holed up in my room with headphones in. I figured that distancing myself was the best way to avoid further distress. We had our good days and bad days and things started to get better once grade 12 started and I started spending most of my time at school or the library or at work, and things really got better once I moved out for university. I try to approach them with more grace now, and they try to be more understanding, so our relationship has recovered for the most part, but ultimately, I think the distance has probably helped our relationship more than anything. As they say, distance makes the heart grow fonder.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a period for a lot of things — stress, anxiety, fear… the list goes on. For me, it was all those things and more. It was a time of self-discovery, acceptance, education, and growth. The pandemic was obviously very traumatic for many people and ultimately a terrible thing for all of humanity to have gone through, but I would not be who I am without it, and I am very happy with the person I am today, so I am very grateful to have experienced the pandemic in the way that I did.