2020 as a Quaran-teenager
St Louis Transition Year student Éadaoin Drumgoole was in The Argus on virtual work experience last week. Like everything else during 2020 it was completely different. No sight of the newsroom she communicated with staff via email and gave an interesting
Had someone told me in Christmas 2019, ‘By the way, four months from now, you won’t be able to leave your house,’ I would have laughed into my mince pie and told them they were crazy.
Now I wish someone had told me, so I could mentally prepare myself. Quarantine from a teenager’s perspective was one of the worst experiences of my life. I missed out on so many milestones, one being my Junior Cert.
I’m a bit of a nerd, to be frank. Just putting that out there. I enjoy the challenge of tests, and I love pushing myself to grow my intellect, so the lack of Junior Cert felt like a missing piece of my puzzle. I spent three years working hard, doing my homework, and studying diligently, and to be told that there wouldn’t be any tests at the end of the year to put the work to use - it was such a letdown. I did have some Summer tests at the end of the year, but they were all online, so the temptation to cheat was almost irresistible.
Speaking of online, Zoom school was yet another challenge that teenagers faced. I would wake up ten minutes before school, throw on a hoodie and jeans, and sit at the computer for a few hours. Not ideal, but it was the best anyone could do. That’s not to say it was all bad, I admittedly enjoyed being able to wake up so much later than I would normally have to, and it was good to have some sort of contact with other human beings.
On the other hand, I felt bad for the teachers, because nobody would put on their cameras or microphones, so the teachers would have to talk to a blank screen. We weren’t trying to be rude when we didn’t turn on the camera, it’s just that some people did classes in bed so that they could immediately go back to sleep afterwards!
Zoom calls, the staple of everyone’s quarantine experience. My extended family, all 40 of us, did a weekly quiz to try to bond, and help our grandparents feel less isolated from humanity. For the first few weeks, it was great! The competition kept our spirits high, the quiz questions kept our brains running, and the Birthday celebration for a different cousin every week kept us full of cake.
Then came the slump.
The calls would last for a few hours, ranging from 2-6pm some weeks. Now, I love my family, and they’re such wonderful people. But there’s a time old proverb - ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’ - and let’s just say, there wasn’t a lot of absence happening. I think that’s one of the worst things about Zoom calls - there’s no excuse to get out of it. Who on earth is so busy that they can’t put on a meeting and listen to it as they do something else? The only excuse I could think of involved me ‘not having internet because of a power cut’. I think I sent an email to give that excuse, so I don’t know how nobody copped the lie.
One of the worst things about lockdown was that I couldn’t see my grandparents. At all. And they couldn’t see each other. My granddad was in a nursing home, and my granny lives in her house, so they weren’t even together during the lockdown. The most recent time I visited my granddad was February this year. My sisters and I played music at his nursing home, but he was behind a window, ten metres away from us. To be honest, it was very depressing to see. It’s tragic that my grandparents, who have been married for 64 years, weren’t able to celebrate their anniversary together. In the ten months my granddad spent in the nursing home during the lockdown, my granny only got to visit him eight times.
Luckily, they’re together at home now, and they can sit with each other all day every day. I can’t wait to visit them again. COVID regulations won’t be able to mask our affection.
Another aspect of a teenager’s life in quarantine was the loneliness. During the first month and a half of the lockdown, I didn’t set foot outside my house once. Not even to go to the supermarket. Instead, I played tennis in the driveway with my mam, I practiced music with my sisters, and my dad and I played with the dog. It was a lot of family time. And it was great craic in the beginning.
The lack of in-person school and interaction with someone other than the people I was with 24/7 started to get to me. I wanted to see a different human being. I wanted to go back to orchestra, and to be able to order food in a restaurant, and to see a film with my friends. I wanted to get back to the routine of an average day-in-the-life.
You know that phrase, ‘Be careful what you wish for’? It applies here.
Once school started back up in September, I had to get up at half seven, every morning. I had to wear clothes that weren’t pyjamas or loungewear. Worst of all - I had to do work. Yikes.
But no, I was determined to have a good time. It was Transition Year, the best school year of my life, and I was going to have fun, even if it… well, not killed me. I had been looking forward to TY since first year, and the thought of doing a musical kept me going.
Three guesses what couldn’t happen in TY this year.
The Musical.
It’s nobody’s fault, there’s nothing we can do to get around the restrictions, and I understand that. The teachers were equally disappointed when they told us, but they promised to try their best to give us the best TY experience we could get in the current situation. Fair play to them, it’s been great, and we’ve gone on a lot more trips than I was expecting to. We just can’t get closer than 1 metre to each other.
I look back on last year at school, and we were sitting shoulder to shoulder in class, we were sharing pens and pencils, we were hugging, and we were singing and laughing in a room that didn’t have to be ventilated after 15 minutes. I’m worried that it won’t ever be like that at school again.
It’s not all doom and gloom though, I have picked up all sorts of new skills and appreciation for what I have since March. I’ve learned to handsew, and I’m making Christmas decorations to pass the time, I discovered my ancient Nintendo DS that I got for my 9th birthday, so we’ve been having fun playing on that, but most importantly, I have a new attitude towards difficulties I face - ‘It could always be worse.’
Seriously, it works. It sounds very negative, but once you really digest that there could always be something worse happening, your mindset changes. I got to spend lockdown with my family, and while we got on each others’ nerves, I could have been spending it alone. My year can’t do a musical, and while that’s disappointing, at least we get to go to school and see each other. I never got to do my Junior Cert, but my sister didn’t even get a normal graduation. I think that once my mindset changed, I realised how lucky I am. So, my message to you is to look at what you have, not what you wish you had. I really wanted to go to Spain with my family this Summer, but instead we went to Galway for two nights and discovered the art of Stay-cations. This Christmas will be filled with food, films, and family. While it won’t be the same as other years, it will still be one of love, laughter and happiness.