To mute or unmute: a young person shares her experience on coping through the Covid pandemic

What was your experience like in lockdown? This is my lockdown story.

To mute or un-mute when home-schooling

By the time the third lockdown in Wales (28th December 2020) came around everyone was already fed up. I couldn’t bear the pain of home-schooling any longer. It was even worse the third time round because my school had figured out how to use Google Meet (which is Google’s version of Zoom). The teachers couldn’t really figure out how to use it so they kept unmuting themselves and turning their cameras on at the wrong times which could be quite funny.

One message I do have for teachers is: If your children are screaming in the background please do not worry about having to tend to them. Just mute yourself and turn off your camera because your child is more important than us, it won’t take a few minutes. We’ve missed practically a whole year of school, five to ten minutes isn’t going to make a difference and we are more than happy to miss a few minutes of the lesson. But if your child is being cute and trying to “help” you teach us please let them do it because they're not causing any harm and they might end up wanting a career in teaching, also, it helps spice up the lesson.

GCSE Options: Help!

I also had the added pressure of choosing my GCSE options and I had no idea what I was doing. I was slowly losing motivation and I had started questioning my confidence in making decisions, after all, there weren’t many important decisions to make during lockdown. I was pushing myself to finish every piece of work that my teachers set (apart from P.E.) which felt absurd at the time as so many people had taken on a ‘why bother attitude’, but I think this effort has paid off now.

“The only good things that happened in lockdown were the many more opportunities that the Youth Forum and ALPHA gave to me. I was all of a sudden filling my time after (home) school with regular Zoom meetings that were interesting and fun, and provided a welcome distraction from Covid life.”

Once the coronavirus cases had gone down the lockdown guidelines started easing and I was becoming more hopeful. I’d gone back to school and things were getting better The vaccine programme was going full steam ahead, adding to my levels of hope and optimism. I was so excited to spend loads of money in Primark. I just needed to get to Cardiff to shop with literally anyone!

Swimming on hold…

Through lockdown my Swim Squad training obviously had to be cancelled for eight long months but when we went back for 4 short weeks in November 2020, and just as the Christmas break was about to start, one of our coaches caught Covid. Luckily, we didn’t have to self-isolate because all the safety procedures were being followed.

“I did find throughout lockdown, that without swimming the days were longer and there was nothing to separate school from the rest of the day.”

The worst thing of all was the yearning for the competitive atmosphere of swimming competitions. When we went into the third lockdown and I didn’t do any exercise for a while because I didn’t have the motivation. However, 3 weeks before the Easter break my mum made a deal with me:

“If I ran 21km she would buy me a double bed!”

We were in the process of redecorating my room. I completed this challenge and had my double bed by the time the shops were reopening on the 12th of April. When we went back swimming in the middle of May all my swimming friends were going on about how much exercise they had done throughout all of the lockdowns! All I had to offer was the amount of series I’d binged on Netflix! Oops.

Friendships went virtual during lockdown

Where do I start with the story of my friendships during lockdown. Ermm… In the first lockdown we were all on FaceTime every night (8 of us) and then in the second lockdown some of us were on FaceTime every night (5 of us) and then in the third lockdown there was 3 of us left just snapchatting each other because we didn’t see the point of going on FaceTime. I still don’t know why everyone left me and my 2 friends. I guess everyone just moved on. I mean there’s less arguments and it’s easier to plan stuff but I do miss the atmosphere of a big group.

That’s my lockdown story. What was yours?

Isabella
Alpha Youth Advisory Group