School broke a long time ago
In my bedroom, I keep a whiteboard with a to-do list and I'm surrounded with motivational trinkets: Favorite quotes. Polaroids of friends. College postcards. Lately, that last one feels less like a promise and more like a maybe.
My mom has a rule about leaving my bedroom door open. Often, that means that I hear the noise of the rest of the house. My family speaks Chinese, and I'm not exposed to as much English at home as I would be at school. Usually, I like to write, but without the conversations I have with my classmates and the camaraderie we share, I haven’t felt very creative. To pass the time, I watch anime.
Still, my friends and I are working hard to stay connected. A few weeks into quarantine, I was invited to a virtual surprise party for a friend. We held a large Zoom meeting and tricked him into joining. To embody the birthday spirit, everyone changed their backgrounds to my friend's face. The birthday boy described it as cult-like, but we thought it was funny. We also made a collection of birthday cards for him using Google Slides, and we watched him read each "card" that was written for him.
My generation might be tech-obsessed, but at least we’re adaptable.
Surprisingly, the transition to distance learning hasn't been difficult. For me, school broke a long time ago: Several of my teachers seemed uninterested in teaching or their teaching methods made it hard for me to learn. So I learned years ago to look for answers on my own.
Going forward, I worry about how I’ll be treated back at school once quarantine is over. As a Chinese-American, I fear that I will face blame and name-calling because of the anti-Asian rhetoric about the virus. In the real world beyond my school and home, coronavirus and racism are realities everyone will face. What's happening now is helping me prepare for that.