How COVID-19 Has Affected Me

By SierraRose Gibson, 12

Covid-19 has really affected my everyday life. As a student, I now have to stay home for classes. As a student of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is one of the largest school districts in the country, online school will not even fully begin until next Monday as of the writing of this ‘blog’ (4/6/2020). I am still working on packets given to us by our teachers about 3 weeks ago (and it feels so long ago now), back when we thought we would be back in 2 weeks (so I wouldn’t have gotten them in in time–oops). Now we are looking at around the end of April or even the rest of the semester as an end date–and if the quarantine ends when summer break begins, I most likely won’t see some of my friends in person until we’re 8th graders! (I’m in 7th). Anyway, staying home all day isn’t so bad for me, as someone who prefers staying inside for the most part. I enjoy playing video games, drawing, writing and browsing Reddit and YouTube, and those don’t require anything outdoors.

What really worries me about Covid-19 is not that I might get it personally, but that important people in my life such as my mom and my grandmother might get it, as they are more susceptible than I am. What makes me most hopeful is that we will still get to continue school, but at home so at least I will still be able to return to some normalcy.

My gym teacher posted a video of herself running around the school track. She told us that all of the teachers were allowed to go back one day to gather supplies, and were getting trained on how to use video calling services and use online learning resources. At that point, though we had already been told about the lengthened break from school, it really set in that we weren’t going back for a while, that my teacher was doing this to let us see that our school, which we had gone to every weekday for 1½ years, was closed for us, the 7th graders. I realized that I wouldn’t run to and from classes and rush to get to my locker before they close the halls for lunch for a long time.

That was a true realization point.

Overall, quarantine is greatly affecting my life, but there have been some silver linings. I played (at home) a 100% online VR game with my friend. I figured out how to play Minecraft online with a friend who used to come over every weekend to play with me, so we can continue even when we’re in our own homes. I go on long Discord calls in which we don’t need to talk very much to enjoy each other’s company. Quarantine is hard, but I think that we can all figure it out for the time being. Life must go on, one way or another.

SierraRose Gibson, 12
Los Angeles, CA