As we enter the month of April, I have now been doing online learning and practicing social distancing for nearly two months. Since the beginning of February, our school has been providing education through online learning due to the breakout of COVID-19 through the platform of either Google Meet or Zoom. In the first few weeks, I felt happy and was satisfied with the online learning as I was able to get more sleep than usual, and had more free time and less work time than usual as well. Although my daily routine had changed, I was still happy, as I focused more on what I could do than what I couldn’t. However, as the days went by, I realized how exhausting online learning can be. Sitting in front of a computer at least four hours a day started to feel overwhelming and for some reason I felt more stressed than when I was actually in school. As I talked with my teachers and my peers from different classes, I learned that I wasn’t the only one feeling this way, but that everyone was experiencing it, having to sit down in the same place all day staring at our computer screens and hardly moving at all.

Day after day, the online learning and social distancing made me think of how precious our “normal” daily lives were. Going out with a friend on the weekends, going to school every day, meeting teachers and friends, and going out for dinner with family. All of these activities that weren’t considered special events are now impossible. For the past few months, what has been “normal” for me has been wearing masks and gloves when leaving the house, listening to news stories every day about the death rate and people getting infected with COVID-19, and, most importantly, not being able to interact with anyone other than my family. I didn’t know how these changes would affect me, but the past few months have taught me how precious everything that we don’t usually consider “special” actually is. After staying in my house for a month and not going outside unless necessary, I started to look for something to do after my online learning work because I wanted to distract myself from feeling awful and depressed. So, my sister and I started to search for something we could make at home, leading us to consider cooking.

We looked up recipes for macarons, cakes, and Soufflé pancakes on YouTube and tried making these deserts to spend our time productively at home. While I always liked cooking, I never had enough time to enjoy it when I was going to school, but now that I have all this extra spare time, I was able to enjoy what I always loved doing in my free time. Although I am happy that I have the time to do what I enjoy, I truly hope that this unexpected worldwide disaster of COVID-19 ends soon so that we can all go back to our daily lives.

Currently, our school’s Student Council members are initiating a fundraising campaign to support people here in Korea. Even at this time, countless people are suffering globally due to this virus. I truly hope that everyone fights through this, and I would like to express my utmost respect and appreciation for everyone around the world who is working to get through this global catastrophe.

Ashley Minju Song
Junior (Grade 11)
Chadwick International