I am a high school student studying in Hong Kong. Today is my last day of Easter break, and online class resumes tomorrow (April 20th) – but despite being grateful that our school is able to provide an abundance of resources to assist our learning, I am dreading it.
I still remember the day where we were on our last day of school before the Chinese New Year holiday. That was in January 24th. We had an whole school assembly before dismissal, and I remember all of us saying, ‘Good-bye! See you in two weeks!’. In Wuhan, China, a virus outbreak has been declared, but many of us were travelling abroad to spend our holiday anyways.
As I was leaving the school, everyone was crowded outside the nurse’s office. I realised that they were lining up for surgical face masks. Parked in our school carpark was an ambulance. Rumours spread, and I was informed that somebody who lived in the same block as a man who was infected by COVID-19 started having high fevers in school. The scene was chaotic.
The government eventually announced that school would resume in February 17th as the number of infected cases rose. Everyone in my class chat seemed happy for the extra two weeks of holiday.
But as the number of confirmed cases continued to rise, it was announced by our government that school will only resume on March 16th. Our school introduced online platforms to make learning as ‘normal’ as possible, so even though I get a few extra hours of sleep, I still had to check in with my homeroom at 8:25AM daily. I had science from 8:40- 10:00, humanities from 10:00- 11:40, math from 11:40- 1:00 and english class from 2:00- 3:00. I even had my club ‘meetings’ during ‘lunch time’, which was between 1:00-2:00. I had at least 4 zoom meetings a day, each lasting 1 hour and 20 minutes.
Most people thought that online school was going to be less stressful, but this new way of learning was even more exhausting than actually going to school, despite not having to wake up at 6:00AM to catch my morning bus anymore. Still, up until that point, everyone was optimistic that we would be back at school after a few weeks. It wasn’t until soon that the date have been pushed back to April 20th- which would be another month. I wanted to scream in space.
People say I am a self-driven person because I push myself and persist in everything. Yet, hearing this announcement felt like an knife, slitting open the insides of my ears. I felt a searing pain. How was I supposed to survive another month without seeing my friends? How was I going to live, staying at home every day?
Time went by and the date for school to resume was pushed further to a time unknown.
My motivation levels plummeted to the bottom.
The routine of waking up, working on my laptop, eating lunch, working again, eating dinner and sleeping became so tedious all of a sudden. It is mentally exhausting. I have no ‘free-time’ at all, because I still have ‘homework’ and ‘in-class’ exams. It feels ironic, and I absolutely hate it.
But despite it all, I continue to remind myself of how far I’ve come. In Hong Kong, all of us have survived this irksome routine for over three months. Therefore, I try to think of this experience as a test, indicating that we were all stronger than we thought we were. We can, and we will push through to the end. That said, I can not express how grateful I am for being in a better position than many other people out there.
If you are reading this right now, know that you can and will get through this hard time, because you are stronger than you think also. Time really does fly, and it is precious even if it’s spent at home.
The Big Duck 