Toronto grads in the year of Covid

grade 12 was not what they imagined: no prom, no varsity teams, no senior trip. But these teens survived the quadmester system and made their way through online school. Here’s how they coped—the good and the bad— and what they’re doing next

I’ve been a student at UCC since Grade 6, which was the first year I could get financial assistance. Grade 12 was my first time living in residence because I received extra scholarship funding. I’m an only child and grew up living with my mom, who’s a teacher, and my grandma, so I was excited to live in the dorms with my friends.

For around 80 per cent of the school year, we weren’t allowed to leave campus because of Covid, but we were luckier than most kids because we were all bubbling together. We planned activities for the weekends, like movie nights, karaoke or even just cooking meals together. We played basketball, football and tennis, and went cross-country skiing on one of the soccer fields. We had hockey tournaments where the UCC players taught some of the guys to skate. It made you forget about Covid for a bit and pretend that everything was normal.

I spent a lot of time with the younger guys, checking in on them, giving them study tips, helping them choose classes or just encouraging them to spend less time on TikTok. They were my little brothers! I grew a lot during Covid. While I was living at school, I was the happiest I’ve been.

This year, I was the president of the Black Student Union. I focused my efforts on looking at the curriculum: what are we teaching kids about Black history? What kinds of stories are they reading in English class? I was able to sit in on the English department discussions regarding next year’s curriculum. I drew from my own experiences when discussing the need for different types of stories, instead of the struggle-to-success stereotype. One day, a vice-principal pulled me aside and said, “You have a voice, make sure everyone hears it.” I’m never going to forget that.

In September, I found out UCC was nominating me for the Loran Award, a merit-based scholarship of $100,000 over four years. More than 6,000 students applied and I was one of 72 finalists across the country. In mid-March, I got the call. I’m not really an anxious person, but my hands started to shake when my phone rang. When the woman on the other end said I got it, I was like, “Thank you, thank you.” I was definitely overwhelmed, because my mom worked so hard to provide me with everything, and just knowing that I wouldn’t have that financial strain on me for the next few years, that was a huge burden lifted.

Next year, I’m studying medical sciences at Dalhousie. My long-term goal is pediatrics. I’m driving out to Halifax with my mom in early September. Obviously, she’s not happy that her baby boy is going to be an 18-hour drive away, but she knows that I’m responsible enough, and that living at university will help me grow. Years ago, she told me,

“No one can take your education away from you. You will always have that.”

Life was good before the pandemic. I was in a few extracurriculars at school, like the Science Club, the Eco Warriors and the Gay Straight Alliance. My friends and I would hang out at lunch and do our homework at each other’s houses after school, or go to Square One to get something to eat. Once a week, I’d meet with the New Youth Council, which is run by the museums in the City of Mississauga. We’d plan activities at the museum and run donation drives.

I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety in Grade 8, and spending time with friends helps me cope, so things got bad for me when Covid hit. I had no appetite, no energy, trouble sleeping. Once Grade 12 started, I had the added pressure of applying to universities. There were days when I just wanted to stay in bed. I couldn’t focus on my homework, and I missed a lot of deadlines, but my teachers were super understanding. I managed to maintain 90s in all my classes, but it was much harder to do.

With the change to quadmesters, the amount of work was overwhelming. By November, I thought to myself, It wouldn’t be too bad if I just took an extra year to finish high school. But I figured I’d already gotten through a couple of months of it, so I could do another couple of months.

I found ways to manage my stress. I FaceTimed with my friends a lot. Sometimes I’d call a friend and we’d do our homework over the phone or play Minecraft or just talk about life. A few of my clubs went online, and it was nice to connect with my classmates virtually. I’d join the Gay Straight Alliance meetings a couple of times a month, and we’d talk about things like queer and trans representation in the media. When I heard that long-term care homes were hit hard by Covid, I came up with an idea to organize a holiday card drive. We got 400 handmade cards that people sent in to long-term care residents in Mississauga.

A lot of my family back in India, where my dad is from, were affected by Covid. About 20 close relatives got it and four have passed away. I have a pretty rocky relationship with most of my extended family, due to my identity as a trans and queer person. But I’m close with a few of them, and I’ve been preoccupied thinking about them. I’m also worried for my dad. He’s lost a lot of family and friends in the past year.

Before Covid, I was leaning toward studying science in university. After seeing how important health care workers have been this past year, I decided to study health sciences and accepted an offer from Queen’s for September. I want to do something where I can have an impact and help other people, and I’m hoping to go on to med school.

They call lupus “the disease with a thousand faces” because it manifests so differently in every patient. My childhood was marked by several strange afflictions: inexplicable fainting, skin lesions and hair loss. After years of testing, treatments and extended hospital stays, it finally came back that I had lupus.

Even though lupus impacts a significant number of people— with a disproportionately high percentage of them being women of colour—it’s not as well understood as some other chronic illnesses. So, when I was 11, I co-founded the Rally Against Lupus, an annual ping-pong tournament to raise awareness about the condition. I spoke at the event every year, hoping that sharing the details of my life would make the experiences of people living with lupus more comprehensible. Public speaking allowed me to connect with other advocates and see first-hand the power of telling stories that are rarely heard.

A few years later, when visiting Pakistan, I was struck by how many girls were household servants instead of students because they did not have access to safe, sanitary schools. I knew I had to do something. I began using my advocacy network and public speaking skills to raise awareness about girls’ educational inequality, working in partnership with the Citizens Foundation and the Aga Khan Development Network.

The pandemic brought all of that work to a halt. Because I’m immunocompromised, I’ve been fully isolated at home since last March. Even when my friends returned to a hybrid of in-person and remote learning, I continued learning remotely—with my bedroom daylighting as a classroom.

While large public speaking events have been on pause, I’ve joined the Lupus Research Alliance’s Young Leaders’ Board and their “Lift Up Lupus” campaign to continue my advocacy. I was also invited to speak at the organization’s virtual gala alongside Lady Gaga,

Mike Bloomberg and Selena Gomez. Sharing my experiences with this larger audience showed me that I could do more than increase awareness or help raise funds to find better treatments and a cure; I could help other isolated people feel less alone.

I’m looking forward to the future.

I’m taking a gap year to research how globalization affects pharmaceutical development with a Yale professor. After that, I’ll be heading to Duke University to study economics, which I see as the engine of our modern world. I hope that at Duke, I’ll learn how I can use existing financial structures to make meaningful social change, especially for those whose voices are obscured by illness, oppressed by racism, and silenced beneath stereotypes.

When schools shut down for the first time back in March 2020, we were all like, Woohoo—no school! At the time we thought it was going to be a couple of weeks… and then it was the rest of the school year. Going into grad year in September, I was hopeful that things were going to get back to normal, but of course they didn’t. The hardest part for me has been the lack of in-person contact. I love my family, but there is only so much you want to see the same four people. I miss my friends.

We live in Brampton in the L6P postal code, which is apparently the Covid capital of Canada. We’ve been super cautious. My dad’s a police officer, and for a while, he would go straight to the shower when he got back from work. My mom’s three siblings live in the same area, and normally we’re like one big family—holidays together, big dinners once a week. We haven’t been all together since my cousin’s university graduation last July, when groups were allowed to gather outdoors, except one time in December when we let our guard down and my cousin came for a sleepover. That’s all it took.

A couple of days after that, his mom told my mom that he wasn’t feeling well. And then the next day my dad started to feel sick. He already has some breathing issues and sometimes uses a puffer, and I’d heard about ventilators being in short supply, so that was stressful. Within a week, we all tested positive, but we were lucky—nobody ever had to go to the hospital. And we’re big Costco shoppers, so there was plenty of food in the house. I definitely felt sick—worse than a cold or the flu—but nothing too dramatic. You know when you have a cold and you have phlegm in your throat? With Covid it felt like my entire body was covered in phlegm. I basically just lay on the couch for a week. My friends have always said that I have to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine because I want to be a cop, so that’s what I did.

The idea of public service has always been important in our family. I recently got my security licence and am about to start a new job as a security guard at Brampton Civic. Policing is still my long-term plan, but first I’ll do my degree in public administration at York. My parents asked the other day if I would consider doing school virtually, and I was like, “Heck no!” I can’t wait to spend time with friends again.

Even more than prom or grad or any one thing, I’m sad that my class has missed out on the chance to say a proper goodbye. This has been such a huge chapter, and we never got a chance to close it. I always imagined the spring of Grade 12, with university acceptances out of the way, just driving around with my friends, goofing off, making the kind of memories that we would look back on when we’re all grown up. I guess we all had to grow up a little faster this year.

Ilive in a small apartment in Flemingdon Park with my mom and my sister. My mom went back to school recently to become a business analyst and has been struggling to find work. It’s important for me to financially contribute to my family. Before the pandemic, I was working at Swiss Chalet four or five days a week, and about 60 hours a week during the summer. I got used to studying on the bus and doing homework during my breaks. When the pandemic hit, I had to keep working to support my family, but I was scared about getting Covid. In May, I ended up changing jobs to work at Ultimate Kitchens, a ghost kitchen in Leaside.

Once Grade 12 started, things got really stressful. I thought to myself, I have to keep my grades up, I can’t afford to make any big mistakes. I opted to attend virtual school to keep my family safe, but it was a big adjustment. And with the quadmester system, the workload was so unpredictable. Some nights, I’d only sleep four hours so I could get all my schoolwork done.

Applying to university in the States had been on my mind for a couple of years. Social justice is important to me, and I thought about the difference I could make in the world if I were studying under some of the greatest minds. Harvard was my “reach” school, but I needed time to write essays for my application, so I cut my shifts down from four to three a week. Luckily, my little sister had just turned 14, and I got her a job as a dishwasher at Ultimate Kitchens. Between me and my sister and my savings from the summer, we made the family finances work.

In December, my aunt passed away from Covid. Due to pandemic restrictions, we could only attend the funeral virtually. It was heartbreaking seeing my cousins in so much pain. My community has been hit hard. Flemingdon Park is a hot spot because we have very big families living in small apartments, and a lot of them are essential workers.

I didn’t tell any of my friends that I was applying to Harvard. I didn’t want anyone to think I had unrealistic expectations. April 6 was the day I was going to find out if I got in. I was sitting at the computer, and my mom was sitting next to me—like, she was sharing my seat. When I saw the offer, I thought, No way. My mom started bawling. My sister was behind us, jumping up and down. It wasn’t until I called my grandparents that I started crying myself. They were so happy. It was a beautiful moment for me because they risked a lot coming to Canada. It felt so good to make them proud. A couple of days later, I found out that I got a full scholarship, which will cover my tuition and living expenses. That was a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.

I’m the youngest of six siblings, and I’ve always been my family’s go-to tech guy. I taught my parents how to use WhatsApp and Zoom to stay connected with friends and family living abroad. Every Sunday, there’s a family reunion on Zoom that everybody gets dressed up for. I set up the space for them, moving furniture around so they have a nice backdrop for the call. I chose my high school, SATEC, because it offers computer science and networking courses. And when Cyber Seniors, an organization that helps seniors learn technology, reached out to my school looking for volunteers, I knew it was right up my alley.

I created a Zoom presentation about word-processing programs and presented it to a group of about 65 seniors. I’m not the best public speaker, but they were all extremely kind. I said, “This is my first one, so don’t expect anything too good.” At the end they all told me, “Great job,” “Your smile was great, keep smiling more.” It felt really good to help people. The most important part of teaching seniors about technology is having patience. In a world where everything is lightning fast, seniors take their time. Even something that we’d consider very basic, like a drop-down menu, might be difficult for them to understand at first. You just have to listen and explain.

It’s been nice to be part of a community during the pandemic. It’s not like doing a school assignment that gets graded and disappears into the cloud. This feels like it’s actually benefiting someone. You’ll see the seniors on the screen with pens and paper, taking notes on your presentation. They all have their cameras on before the webinars start, and they recognize each other and say hi. It’s really rewarding to be a part of that.

It’s a bit unfortunate that my Grade 12 year has been limited by Covid. We had the option to do a hybrid of in-person and online learning, but since the in-person portion was only about an hour each day, and I live an hour-and-a-half’s bus ride from school, it didn’t make sense for me to attend. I’m not going to lie, I miss my friends. I haven’t seen some of them in over a year. The good thing is that since I have so many siblings, we’re like our own friend group.

I chose Ryerson because I want to stay close to my family. My mom suffers from a disorder called paraneoplastic syndrome, which affects her muscle movement and memory, so I want to be around to see her more. I’m definitely excited for things to go back to normal and for university to start in the fall. This summer, I’d like to get a job, hopefully buy a car and save some money for tuition. I’d also like to keep volunteering with Cyber Seniors.

I’m just trying to get it together and not be such a kid anymore. I think that’s going to be the summer goal.