Life in Lockdown by Holly Hunt
After Boris announced the lockdown, the world became a crazy, chaotic and complicated journey into the unknown. A journey in which we sold out of toilet roll. It was insane. However, after the initial excitement of schools shutting, it became clear how drastic this change would be. Many young people, including myself, believed that the nationwide lockdown would end up being a few months where we could work on ourselves and our education before returning back to a safe reality under the umbrella of a working vaccine. We did not expect to be kept inside for 5 months to ensure the safety of those around us, let alone be entering a second lockdown this late in the year. Amongst all the confusion we felt, we decided to make the most of it. FaceTime and Zoom became our most used apps as we strived to keep in touch with our friends and more
minutes before your first online lesson was extremely helpful, yet at the same time it became a very bad habit. Staying up late and waking up even later became a hurdle that many of the students had to tackle, but the hardest was motivating ourselves. I asked a few of my classmates general questions about their individual experiences and challenges in lockdown, and many replied saying how difficult it was to remain on track with studying and staying healthy. In an interview with one of my classmates, she mentioned that "without the structure of a
“Whilst it is hard for us to see the positives of the situation as we enter another lockdown, we must look forward rather than backwards.� importantly the elder members of our family who had to shield. It was a big change which had more than a few teething problems, but it almost immediately became flawlessly integrated within our daily routines. It made everyone feel more involved in people's isolated lives - a welcome and happy distraction from the press conferences and news headlines which became increasingly more worrying every day. This positive mindset did not last as long as I would have hoped. Sleeping, working and relaxing predominantly in my bedroom did have its negatives as well as its positives. Of course, rolling out of bed to throw on some clothes ten
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timetabled day and being at school, it was much harder to remain focused with all the distractions in my room." This was a common feeling throughout many students, including myself. Following this answer, I asked her how she managed to keep herself motivated, if at all. She replied confidently with "I made my own timetable! I made sure I studied during the time I would have been at school and then exercised or tried something new around school hours. It worked for the most part!" The good news is that we all managed to come out the other side of the lockdown with a smile on our faces and a headstrong determination to tackle our school and social
life again. Even though school life is ten times the pressure for our A-Level year with ten times the amount of precautions to prevent the spread of this virus, we are too grateful to complain! It has come as a welcome break from partaking in online learning for five months and we could not be more relieved. Whilst it is hard for us to see the positives of the situation as we enter another lockdown, we must look forward rather than backwards. We have so many family events to celebrate, loved ones to hug and places to visit. For many people, life has changed irrevocably and will never be the same again. Even for those of us who have been lucky enough to have not been adversely affected, the experience of lockdown is likely to be with us forever and undoubtedly colour who we are in our future lives. We must not underestimate that, whilst individually we may have gone nowhere, collectively we have travelled far.
