Lockdown has been lonely and exhausting . . . Telling us our exams have been scrapped is final straw
One’s 17, the other a mother-of-three. Their stories reveal shattering toll of closed schools
ITHINK I speak for teenagers everywhere when I say we are exhausted. Mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted. What was meant to be our coming-of-age time, the careless period of partying, young love and learning, has been flipped on its head and instead turned into a year of heartbreak, loss and – most of all – loneliness.
It’s strange to even think of who I was, and what I wanted to be, before all this.
I began my A-level year with so much hope of meeting new people, of succeeding in my exams.
My life path wasn’t concrete by any degree, but I had aspirations of getting a degree and pursuing a career in graphic design or even, if I was lucky, architecture. The options felt limitless. But then all our freedoms were snatched from us in the blink of an eye, and with it our options.
Practically, there were suddenly big obstacles. The closure of schools and workshops left me with no way of developing my design portfolio, meaning that a subject I had adored and done well at instantly became impractical, and a source of huge frustration.
But the psychological challenges were enormous too. I hadn’t spent a day alone for years. I would see my friends every day at school. There would be a party almost every Friday. Until, that is, the day the virus we all shrugged at – thinking it was either a hoax or a distant issue that would never affect us – resulted in every teen’s worst nightmare: isolation.
This may sound over the top, but to be left alone can often be the worst thing for a teenager to experience. We need school and friends and as many distractions as possible from the turmoil constantly rampaging in our minds.
BEING alone with only the voices in our heads for company i s not good for us. And if it’s hard for me and my friends, I dread to think of the awful experiences of children who l i ve in abusive households, where there is no place more dangerous than their own home.
Observing how people my age adjusted to the first lockdown was extremely interesting. Phase one consisted of people downloading Houseparty, an app where you could video-call large groups of people and play online games. It was a strange, technology-based dystopia where everyone was desperately trying to feel less isolated. And to begin with, it worked.
The nature of this pandemic meant that although the situation was awful, it was a universal experience. We were all going through the same struggles and this created some kind of social solidarity.
Once the novelty wore off, though, the response was varied. Some friends turned to raiding their parents’ drinks cabinets, others went the other way and began to diet or exercise excessively.
For some in my wider social group, the use of marijuana and prescription drugs such as Valium and Xanax has resulted in one or two of them being sent to rehab clinics. Others have simply developed a low-level addiction to distract themselves from what they describe as t he emptiness of their existence.
But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Let us not forget the hair-dyeing phase, where almost every girl I know had some form of identity crisis which she automatically assumed could be resolved with bright pink hair dye. It couldn’t, but we had fun trying.
While teens seemed to all adopt different forms of distraction – healthy or unhealthy – the common theme was fear.
Young people don’t want to admit this. We like to pretend we are all adventure and daring, but in reality we need and crave security. The prospect of everything you once took for granted being snatched from you is scary. I am now an A-level student in my second year, yet I have been in school for less than five months. My brother has worked out that he has had a whole summer holiday’s worth of time off this academic year.
The exam stress Year 13 and
Year 11 pupils have been put under is astronomical. Many of my friends have no proper access to a laptop so they are unable to participate in online lessons. And last week’s announcement about the cancellation of exams has been the final straw.
Not to be melodramatic (as teens usually are), but what on earth does that mean? Do I revise? What about my uni application? Do I even bother at this point? Or should I just rip all my revision cards off my bedroom wall and set fire to them in the back garden? The lack of clarity – and hope – has taken its toll on everyone.
From my point of view, especially, the utter disregard for students taking creative subjects has been appalling, with no guidance for coursework or portfolios. And after the Department for Culture, Media and Sport released those advertisements urging people in the arts to retrain for a different career in ‘ cyber’, many talented young people felt utterly hopeless.
I never realised how lucky I was to be able to sit in an actual classroom with a physical t eacher until I found myself at my desk in my bedroom opposite a teacher desperately trying to articulate the lesson on screen while I was frantically rummaging through different textbooks, flashcards and websites just to try to understand the simplest concepts. This drove me (and everyone else) absolutely insane.
That said, some amazing things have come from lockdown too. I
Some friends turned to drink or drugs as a distraction from empty lives
Should I revise – or should I rip up my work and set fire to it in the garden?
have made some incredible new friends online, and I think the time spent in solitude has helped me grow up a bit. It’s rare for people of my age to have that much enforced self-reflection, but it’s been good for me. To spend that much time alone has a massive effect on not only how you view yourself but the world around you as well.
I think for many teens across Britain, maintaining friendships and relationships has been difficult. Pre- lockdown there were countless opportunities to socialise, you would see your friends at school and you had the freedom to go wherever you wanted.
To go from that to sitting alone in your room, lost, confused and lonely, made the small moments so much more special.
Simply meeting friends in a socially-distanced circle outdoors for the first time in summer felt strangely beautiful, a new-found appreciation of something we all previously took for granted.
Pre- lockdown me would never have cycled across London to sit in a rain- soaked park with my closest friend. But I’ve learnt to appreciate the smaller things, and I think this is true for many other teenagers too.
Life has changed, everything has changed; and while it may seem hopeless, we have learned to treasure everything we do have.
Not to mention the looming possibility of a Roaring 1920s-type exit from this dystopian reality: the inevitable baby boom, the reopening of clubs and pubs to revive the economy, the celebration parties and, most important of all, FREEDOM. Something I, for one, will never take for granted again.