Hey — what day is it today?
The first few weeks were fun. After my school shut its doors, I slept late, woke up late and did my schoolwork at my own pace. But soon, feelings of boredom began creeping in. Now that I’ve been in quarantine for more than three months, life has been turned upside down and inside out.
My desk used to be my happy place, where I spent most of my time efficiently completing my assignments. Now the lessons I’m learning are about myself, and I’m spending time with family, thinking about the world and the streets beyond my bedroom.
The day the shelter-in-place order came down, I wrote a list of the things I wanted to accomplish during quarantine, which I assumed would be only a month long. Some of my goals: Get fit by doing YouTube workouts every day. Make new foods. Learn a new language. But none of these stuck with me: I couldn’t even make a change to my own life, much less help others.
Painfully, I learned that I’m a real person who procrastinates and doesn’t always do what is best. I have good days and bad days. Sometimes I lose track of what day it is.
Still, I’ve continued learning, thanks to some of my teachers who weren’t deterred by the pandemic. Their assignments have kept me curious; one of my favorites was when my journalism teacher asked us to write about what initiative meant to us and why it is an important skill to have. My answer: I’m excited when I find a story and I want to share that sense of discovery with others when I write.
But maybe the biggest lesson I’m learning comes with what’s happening outside of my house. I’m a female and person of color, but I’m also straight and I benefit from the model minority myth that people of Asian descent face every day. The past few weeks have been an insane emotional, political, cultural and revolutionary rollercoaster. I may not be able to join the protests as I’d like, but they’re shaping me as a more empathetic and outspoken person, a better citizen of the world.