‘I SEE MY FRIENDS AT THE PARK AS NO ONE HAS A GARDEN’ XAVI CLEVERLY, 17

At the beginning of lockdown I felt as if the whole world had stopped and school was the last thing on my mind. Even now, the so-called “home schooling” just isn’t working for me. At first, my family was sharing a laptop, which didn’t help, now I’ve got my own computer, but there are still so many distractions.

My sister will be doing her Chloe Ting workouts and Facetiming her friends, while I scurry around the flat trying to find a good Wi-fi connection. The majority of “lessons” are set pieces of work, which you need to finish on your own online. I feel totally swamped by the workload and it’s making me anxious. School has become quite a lonely experience like you’re doing homework all day and if you get stuck there’s no one to ask for help, so I tend to zone out and get distracted.

You can email the teacher, but it takes so much longer, whereas normally I can just put up my hand and it would be sorted in two seconds.

The live online lessons are OK – I have two with each teacher for my three A-level subjects a week – but it’s just not the same as school. People don’t speak up and ask questions like they would in class, it’s just a load of blank faces, so I miss out on that peer-to-peer interaction.

At the moment I feel like I’m falling behind and I’m worried that my grades will be lower than they would be in non-coronavirus times, which will affect my chances of going to a good university.

On the upside, I’ve been more creative in this period. I’ve been writing poetry and baking and even written a song. I haven’t really felt lonely, mainly because I’ve been gaming more, playing

Call of Duty Warzone – it’s a squad type game you play with a group of friends, so it felt like the boys and me were back together. At the peak, I was playing three hours a day, though I know some were playing five or six hours daily.

Fortunately, because I’m in Year 12 and we have A-levels next year, we have had one session back at school this week and we have two more scheduled before the end of term, mainly to discuss university applications. It isn’t much but it’s better than nothing.

Going back to school was like something straight out of a weird sci-fi movie with everyone funnelled through a particular route and the school nurse scanning you with this weird device, to check our temperature.

I think pretty much everyone has given up on corona now. You can’t expect teenagers to be cooped up for months on end, it’s just not humane.

I did go on a Black Lives Matters protest with my sister and Dad, we were outside and it felt important to stand behind that cause.

I can’t see how we wouldn’t be going back to school in September, that would just be insane. If school is delayed until January 2021 that would be very scary. What lockdown has taught me is that when it comes down to it, I really do miss school.