Quarantine has been a time for everyone to work on themselves. For me, the last few weeks have been helping me get back on track with a lot of work, and focus on myself. I have been exercising everyday, waking up early and sleeping at reasonable times. This has helped me feel healthier than ever, and helped with my mental health. However, adapting to the school work has been a challenge, as it has been for everyone else. The stress of having to learn all the content given to us, knowing that it is critical for us since our final exams are coming up. It has taken me a lot of time to be able to balance both school work and life at home; ensuring that I am still spending time with my family and doing the things I would usually do if we were still at school.
Having learnt that exams are cancelled for this year, and that we definitely won’t be going back to school this academic year has helped with planning the next few weeks. I’ve created daily plans, where I follow a routine; working out, doing school work, working on extended essay, spending time with my family, and making time to catch up with my friends.
The first few days of DLP (distance learning program), I was very motivated. I would be excited to see how the classes would work, and the work was very minimal. A week or so after starting DLP, I got very unmotivated, and started missing a few classes, thinking that they wouldn’t be that important. This was when I realized that no matter what class I was missing, I would never do that if we were at school. I started to trying to stay on top of all my work, and never miss assignments, or turn in things as early as possible. This has really helped the way I view my class work, and how important every piece of work I submit really is.
The last few weeks have helped me realize how critical it is to be organized, and responsible about your own routine. It has helped me feel healthy, and helped me push through the difficulties of quarantine. Keeping a daily routine has been a key element to my organization and it has created a new environment in my home. It is hard to see my bedroom as my classroom, but I think that organizing daily routines has made a difference in the way I do my daily school work at home.
CAS, for me, came naturally. For the creativity part, I have been working on my art skills (which are very minimal). We have 2-3 visual arts classes, which for me, is not enough to explore my creativity. I usually work on art on weekends, since I have more time to do a project. I’ve been glueing things on my table, my wall, painting my calculators and phone cases and finding anything blank to paint. This has helped expand my art to more than just a blank canvas; and it has been extremely fun.
For the action part of CAS, I stayed active since day 1 of quarantine, with the help of my very active family. We usually play football or volleyball everyday, and I video call my friends to do daily workouts using Chloe Ting workout programs that we find on youtube. This has helped me stay fit, and sleep well at night.
The service part of CAS is a bit hard to do from home, however I have been thinking of different ways to show service. My apartment building has many kids and babies that are always trying to find a way to stay active. I have tried to entertain them, and have fun with them whilst their parents go downstairs and buy their groceries. It has been a way to help the community in my apartment building, even if it is small, I have had a lot of parents tell me how much they appreciate my help. In the future, I hope that I can continue helping the families in my building, even when quarantine ends, so that parents can have time for themselves, get groceries or anything else they can do with free time.
Overall, the last few weeks have been a great time for me to work on myself, give back to the community I live in, stay creative with art and active with my daily exercise routines. It hasn’t all been positive, there are many days that I have felt very unmotivated, especially before I started creating daily routines. However, I have tried keeping a positive mindset, so I continue to motivate myself, and tell myself that senior year is coming around, which has definitely created a certain stress (a good stress), that has made me work harder than ever.