Looking on the bright side

To be completely honest, my experience all throughout the pandemic has been somewhat neutral. Of course, it wasn’t what I expected 2020 to be like, as well as 2021. I actually didn’t expect it to last as long as it did. Other classmates and I were thrilled of the news that school would be off for “only two weeks,” due to some random virus which none of us had any concern of. Later on, we had then found out this virus would stay a lot longer than two weeks.

In the beginning of the first serious lockdown, I thought nothing of it. Just that people were overreacting over some small virus. I then started to worry once supply of essentials was running out. My mother and I were one of the many people trying to search every drug store for toilet paper. That was then when I started to worry more. I realized this was not some silly virus and life was not going back to normal soon. No friends for who knows how long, school online, hand sanitizer with probably the same worth as gold, it was insane. However, that did not seem as bad to me as it should have.

I took this time to realize what self-care actually is. From the beginning of the pandemic all the way until September 2020, I grew as a person. Being away from people allowed me to focus on myself. Since I barely had anything to do, I picked up a handful of different hobbies, which before I could never see myself doing. A big one is reading. I always thought reading was dreadfully boring and why books even existed when there are movies and television shows. However, one day I got so bored I started to read and realized it actually isn’t as boring as I thought it was. Then days came where I bought many books a month. Now in today’s day I have a bookshelf full of books. Which I certainly did not have back in Summer 2020.

During September, a much happier change happened. The year 2019-2020 I was in grade 9. I would say my grades were average with a couple A’s, B’s, and C+’s. However, in grade 10, 2020-2021, I got straight A’s with the exception of one B. I am being honest when I say I don’t know what happened. The year was much harder, as I’m sure my classmates would agree. School felt like it was non-stop, the only break being when I got to sleep. I do understand how teachers had to squish all the lessons with barely any time, but it was exhausting. I had never worked that hard in school before, somehow it was motivating. I know I sound insane; I can’t even believe myself. Though it is the truth. My experience during the pandemic was not as bad as I thought it would be.