Maianh Tran

How Coronavirus affected my Life?

With the outbreak of the Coronavirus, or COVID-19, my life has definitely been turned upside down. During this time it has been hard for me in many aspects, especially as a teen. It is the time of my life where I am stuck in between being a fun loving child and a responsible adult, a time where I should be out experiencing amazing things while I am still young, a time to spend time with family, friends, and to meet new people. However, now that we are all practicing social distancing, it is hard to do many of those things. Despite this difficult moment we are having, there are at least some benefits to staying home 24/7.

Balance is essential to get through these tantalizing times. Navigating the new uncharted territory of isolation from the world includes managing my time that is dedicated to school work and home life. As far as school work goes, for right now all assignments are given at the beginning of the week and are due at 4:00 pm on Friday. Some teachers are using Google Classroom and Google Hangouts to connect with their students while others have chosen to go with pre-recorded video lessons or live streams to teach lessons. Personally, I prefer the pre-recorded videos or the live streams to learn since my house is almost always noisy, thus making it difficult to give input or participate without becoming a disruption. Since everything I do is from the comfort of my own home, I can manage my time to cater to my needs. Typically I would need to plan out my day’s tasks with commute times in mind, but now I no longer need to worry about that. Instead my new worry is the fact that I also have to tend to household necessities while “attending school”. I normally start on school work around 10 and attend classes from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm, with Square Tech calls in between. I try to go to bed at around midnight to get a full eight hours of sleep.

The amount of sleep I am getting is probably one of the only perks of remote learning. In addition to this benefit, I can allocate my time so that all the assignments I have due for school is done by Thursday of that week so I can have all of Friday dedicated to completing assignments for the Square Tech internship. Another added bonus to these dire times is that I have more family time. When I was physically going to school, I rushed through breakfast and dinner so that I didn’t lose any time to try and finish my homework, now I can enjoy all three meals with my family. By balancing school, this internship, and family, I do feel as though my time management skills have indeed improved from where it was before.

Keeping in touch with family and friends has been quite strange as well. My extended family is quite large and we are very used to being able to see each other in person for holidays, birthdays or other celebrations. Now that social distancing has put a stop to all of our family gatherings, family life has also been moved online. For instance, many birthdays are celebrated during the springtime and over the course of the “Coronacation”, we have experienced Easter along with multiple birthdays over Zoom calls. As far as keeping in touch with friends goes, not much has changed. I normally always text or FaceTime my tight group and staying at home really only increased the amount of face to face time I have with them. If anything we have been seeing each other more often and get to share what we are doing at home, which gives a little more normalcy to this whole situation.

The ability to redistribute and reorganize my time with more freedom has allowed for me to dedicate more of my time to hobbies. Usually, I spent around an hour tops each week at the piano or strumming the ukulele pre-Coronavirus. Now I spend an hour tops each day learning new songs or perfecting existing ones. I have also taken a liking to journaling my experience at home in a bullet journal where I can express my feelings through both words and pictures. Filling up the pages with news clippings and my own doodling has been surprisingly relaxing. Aside from these hobbies, I noticed that my overall well being has improved and I am taking better care of myself and my health. I am eating more fulfilling meals and have been regularly exercising at least five days out of the week. Motivation to keep busy and stay productive has not been easy, but it has turned me into a better version of myself.

In terms of what happens next, I do have a couple fears. When we are allowed outside again, the virus isn’t magically going to disappear. We still need to uphold all the safety precautions we have been utilizing such as avoiding physical contact with others as well as everyday surfaces. Things like frequent hand washing and keeping your hands away from your face are obviously habits that should be kept always, but it is going to be tough to remember that I cannot go around hugging or making any contact with my friends. Going back to school as a junior will also take some adjusting to since I would not have even fully experienced being a sophomore yet. Being back in the school building, changing classes, and many other factors will certainly have a learning curve and require a long readjusting period for me. Another fear I have is public transportation, not so much the health hazard that it poses with the sheer amount of people that use it, but the reactions that I am probably going to get. It is no secret that I am Asian and surely do represent that “look” to most people. Even before the quarantine, when the gravity of the coronavirus plight wasn’t taken as seriously, I would get small comments and looks when being out in public. Now that coronavirus has taken the world by storm with the severity of it all, I fear that those attitudes towards the Asian community will only escalate. However, hopefully those particular people will become more informed and less ignorant during their stay at home.

So far during this quarantine I have found that I am struggling with keeping sane and am missing much of my old life when it was allowed to be outside. However, hobbies like music and journaling, and communicating with others not a part of my household have been useful distractions to aid my frustration. Interaction has undoubtedly been what I miss most since being cooped up at home. Even though we live in a world where we can communicate virtually, it isn’t the same as being there in person. You don’t get to experience things together. All in all, quarantine hasn’t been all bad, but I do hope that we can return to some state of regularity soon.

My brother and I.