In mid-March, my junior year of high school came to a screeching halt. We were out of school for two days due to “cleaning” that had to be done as a safeguard against COVID-19 (just a few days ago, it had been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization). Two days became two weeks, which became two months, which became the rest of the school year.
But more on that later. My junior year started long before the COVID-19 pandemic. I remember walking through the halls in September, backpack and books in hand, bracing myself for “hell year” — what I had been told by older friends, teachers, and pop culture would be the most difficult year yet.
As I quickly learned, the world was not wrong. Junior year was filled with many, many late nights spent studying in my room. All-nighters grew frequent as I tried to memorize the genders of endless nouns for AP Latin or write a cogent APUSH paper on Richard Hofstadter’s interpretation of the Founding Figures. I often was exhausted, heading to school the next morning with dark circles under my eyes. (Yes, I tried covering them with concealer. The result? Cakey under-eyes — and no absence of the dark circles.) I found myself wondering about a strange new question: if you pull an all-nighter doing work, does that make you a night person, or a morning person? If that wasn’t the ultimate testament to my sleep deprivation, I don’t know what was!
When friends found out just how little I slept, their jaws would drop and they often wondered how — and why — I did it. Didn’t I know about self-care? Was my mental health at an all-time low?
Yes, I did know what self-care was, and no, my mental health was not at an all-time low. I push myself to my limits and hold myself to high standards, but I have always been diligent about taking care of myself. When I feel myself getting a little too exhausted, I go to bed early for a few nights; when my positive mindset starts being affected by the pressure of schoolwork and extracurriculars, I pause a moment, take a deep breath, and clear my head.
Hearing these questions from my friends also made me realize just how happy I really was. Passion drives hard work. Junior year was difficult, but also rich. Some of my junior year classes were the most engaging experiences of my life, which certainly made late-night study sessions hardly feel like a burden. I didn’t hate all-nighters; I felt grateful that I had things on which I was willing to work all night.
My favorite class was AP Language & Composition. I appreciated our lessons on how to become a better writer, but I most valued the class as a cultural study. What characterizes our society? What can we glean from the art forms around us? Those were the types of questions with which we grappled, and it was absolutely enlightening. There’s something about the vibrancy of a cultural study that makes you feel small; you realize that you are merely one of the 7.8 billion people that populate this earth, nothing more than a living, breathing product of the environment around you. Simultaneously, the novelty of a cultural study makes you feel powerful. Think of it like this: every population in history has lived in a different world than the people that came before (different customs, different perspectives, different ideas), and you get the privilege of sharing a role in shaping the current world. As much as you are a product of modern culture, modern culture is a product of you. It’s one of those realizations that are larger than life.
And so, I continued through my junior year, feeling tired but more so passionate. I navigated the treacherous waters of the SAT and traversed the rocky terrain of frequent exams, all while keeping a smile on my face.
But all obstacles paled in comparison to COVID-19. At first, it felt like life was temporarily on hold, and I patiently waited for a return to normalcy. It slowly became clear, however, that the pandemic would not be so quick to subside.
Online school started up, and everyone tried to make the most of the situation. Teachers made deadlines flexible, assigned less work, and reminded students that they could reach out with any questions or concerns. We, the students, feeling genuinely grateful for the teachers’ efforts to alleviate our stress, did our best to keep up in return. We knew teachers were putting in their best effort, so we did, too.
Of course, the situation was not ideal, even with everyone trying their best. That was perhaps the most disheartening aspect of all for me. I wanted to see the dedication of students and teachers resulting in success and a flourishing learning environment and a sense of normalcy for us all. Alas, that was too idealistic of an attitude. On top of the overwhelming fact that we were literally living in the midst of a crisis, online classes were awkward and students struggled to learn (among other issues). There are no “winners” in a crisis, and there’s no “success.” I felt guilty feeling success, even in little things, when the world was in the middle of a pandemic.
I quickly fell into a slump of unproductivity and lethargy. This is coming from a student who, for all of high school, willingly stuck to a daily schedule each school night. I can confidently say, I desperately wanted to get back to a daily rhythm. But I couldn’t. The rock that had held together my entire schedule was absent: school. I found myself going to sleep late and waking up late, I wasted time every day, I was inefficient. I missed my productive, hard-working self, but I wasn’t able to channel that energy back. I have generally always been a self-motivated person, but even my self-motivation was failing me. The biggest problem was the fact that COVID-19 had no definitive end date. Because of that, I wasn’t working towards anything, and there was no sense of progression over the course of those days.
Talking to friends, family, and teachers helped. They were more crucial to my existence than ever as we haphazardly trudged through this uncharted territory together.
Slowly, I started to view the pandemic differently. Life was not entirely on pause; it was just difficult to feel the progression on a daily basis. I realized that, even from home, I could do meaningful things — things that I was passionate about, but didn’t always have the time to fully indulge in during the school year.
My slow journey towards productivity began with science research, a program I had entered as a sophomore. The pandemic had hit right during competition season, leading to many cancellations which were disappointing, but understandable. One competition for which I was registered, however, had moved to a virtual format — the New York State Science & Engineering Fair. My science research dream since sophomore year had been to become a Finalist for the International Science & Engineering Fair (ISEF), and if I placed in the top 15 at NYSSEF, I could fulfill this dream.
In the weeks leading up to NYSSEF, I resurrected my productive, motivated self. I did my best to push forward every day, however difficult it was, perfecting my powerpoint presentation and memorizing my script. My sister teased me for being persnickety, but hey — I was just being careful!
The evening after the final round of the virtual fair, I received an email that I had been named an ISEF Finalist. That night, my family and I celebrated, and it was the happiest I had been since leaving school. Part of me still felt guilty as I celebrated — the world was suffering a pandemic, after all — but the people around me had helped me realize that, even as I empathized with the world, I had to be kind to myself and cut myself some slack. We all have to do what we can to get by, so it’s okay to find happiness in little moments. This, I figured, was one of my moments.
Still, personal happiness wasn’t enough. Mustering the members of More Than Mozart, a music outreach club that I had founded in school, we started a fundraiser to help local workers being financially affected by the pandemic. We posted virtual performances on our social media platforms to encourage donations, in lieu of our typical in-person fundraising concerts. Instead of spending late nights comprehending the intricate steps of DNA replication, I found myself spending late nights editing our virtual performances to post on YouTube. My daytime hours were spent on long Zoom calls with More Than Mozart’s board members and writing emails about our fundraiser to local officials. Powering through each step of the process, I hoped that our efforts would contribute, even in some small way, to helping out our community.
We closed our fundraiser on the last day of school, at which point we had raised $2,700 for three local workers. It’s a modest amount, but I hope nevertheless that it can be of some help.
Junior year certainly took an unexpected turn, and I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to live out the rest of the year as it should have been. (I can only imagine how my senior friends feel. They’ve missed their prom, their in-person graduation, and many more much-awaited traditions.) But, I’ve realized that life is like that sometimes — unpredictable, hectic, difficult … insert an adjective of your choice — and perhaps the best we can do is just go with it. To be clear, I am not accepting defeat; I am not content to retreat to the comfort of being idle, nor do I believe I’ll ever be. But stubbornly demanding that uncontrollable circumstances change is just as futile. When we face mountains that impede our path, the truth is we often cannot move them. However, by accepting that they exist, we might climb them; we can scale their jagged walls, step by step, and realize that progress is not impossible — just difficult. In any situation, we can find new ways to take small steps forward.
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