A day in the life of a 16-year-old in Quarantine. Each day starts off with the grating voice of my mother asking me if I am going to sleep the day away. I peel open my tired eyes to see the room fully lit with the rays of the radiant sun. Peering at the clock in the corner of the room that reads 10:30. A few weeks ago sleeping in until 10:30 Am on a weekday would be the best thing on the planet! Sadly it is not just an ordinary day it is another day in Quarantine.
I roll out of bed and change my pajamas into a fresh pair of other pajamas and slump my way downstairs. I serve my self breakfast and open my laptop to a screen filled to the brim with emails from my teachers assigning me classwork at all hours of the day. I am hushed by my sister who is on a zoom call with one of her classes. I have to tiptoe around my house so I don’t interrupt her call. Almost every day I am also forced to go on one of these awkward online lectures where all the students put the camera to the ceiling to hide their bed.
After many hours of staring at a dimly lit computer screen and many unprecedented social media breaks my school work finally is finished. I spend the rest of the day finding things to keep myself busy. I try to do something productive like clean my room or organize. I try to dedicate some of my day to art whether it is drawing, painting, or taking pictures. The days seem to drag on and continue to have the same ongoing events.
My mom makes us go on walks with the dog every day to get us all out of the house. I go for long drives with no destination. Just to get out of the house. When the sun goes down the TV comes on and the cycle continues. With no school, it’s crazy how many hours there really is in a day.
COVID-19 has flipped my schedule upside down. Everything from school life to home life is being thrown off.
School life has changed drastically, it changed from waking up at 5:30 Am, to attending classes for six-plus hours and being around a thousand plus kids all day. As well as attending practice for hours after school. Now school is on the computer. I wake up at any time and begin whenever I please. I communicate with my teachers on Zoom, an online website where the audio cuts in and out and poor video quality. My teachers request you to show your face to make sure you are paying attention which is embarrassing because the entire class sees that you haven’t showered yet. Due to online school, I no longer see people in the hallway or my friends in class. I miss the social interaction. Being stuck at home all-day has me feeling like a modern-day Rapunzel locked in a tower.
Being stuck in the house for weeks and weeks has really opened my eyes to a lot of things. Such as how much social interaction you really get from being in school. I miss my friends and the people I see daily. It really feels like something is missing out of my day with no social interaction. Also being in quarantine has shown me how much I really leave the house every day. I used to be home to just eat sleep, wake up and then leave. I’ve come to realize how much I love my house. During this quarantine, I’ve completely redone my room and now it’s where I spend all my time. Being home has also made me so grateful for the things I have. I have gotten so used to leaving the house for whatever I needed, such as the store, restaurants or even going over a friend’s house. Having all these things that you are used to doing daily taken away from you makes you really grateful for having it in the first place.
Quarantine and COVID-19 are the thieves of my junior year. They have taken many things away from me. I have to miss out on my junior prom because of quarantine. I had spent months finding the perfect dress and spent a lot of time waiting for it. I am also missing out on my two best friends Birthdays. Due to Quarantine, I couldn’t celebrate either of their birthdays with them. COVID-19 has also stolen my spring sport away from me. I can’t go to fun practices or participate in races with my team.
Medical mask and blue latex gloves are the newest fashion trend. Going to the supermarket is something straight out of a horror film. There’s nothing on the shelves and people just look s though they are on edge. There is a weird feeling I get when I leave my house. The streets are empty and the only lights on are inside the houses. The death rates of people rise by over 100 daily. Someone please wake me up from this nightmare. I don’t want to listen to the news anymore. I would like for things to go back to normal. Yet I don’t think they will any time soon. At first, I wasn’t worried about the virus at all but then when the school got closed everything became a little too real. I worry about my health as well as the health of my family and others around the world.
Editor’s Note: Emily Gosselin is a Haverhill High School Early College student at NECC. She wrote this essay for an English Composition 102 class and agreed to share her story with the Observer.
