May 20th 2020

For the Coming of Age 2020 project I chose to submit a picture of my journal entry I wrote in 8th grade at the beginning of online learning. I chose this because I feel as though it perfectly sums up my attitude towards what was going on at the time and it also sums up some other people’s reaction toward Quarantine and COVID. I talk about not taking the situation seriously. Back when it started, I knew Covid was a threat but I, to an extent, thought that I just wouldn’t get it or it just wasn’t that big of a deal. That was until my father became sick. You never really realize the pure danger in something till it basically slaps you in the face and my project talks all about that. My project also talks about school. Since I’m in 9th grade, I had to leave the school in which I wrote this in. I’ve been at that school since 3rd grade when I transferred there. During the last few weeks before school closed was hard. We were starting our PSSA prep and got a new principal who changed things up a lot. I started to hate that school and would say I couldn’t wait to leave. When they sent out a letter that we wouldn’t be back in school in 2 weeks I was ok with that because I still wasn’t fully educated on coronavirus. It wasn’t until May 19th when the school said they would send a cap, I was upset and asked my mother why and she asked me if I new what was going on. I was still oblivious and she turned on the news. I saw thousands of cases of COVID-19 and saw the amounts of death. I was finally scared straight. I was also told I won’t be going back to school either until possibly next year, which meant highschool would start but we won’t be there to really go. That was the exact moment I finally had a realization. The next day on online class the teacher told us to write down our feelings, and I did. I wrote about my journey to finding out why this world was in a panic and why I should have taken it more seriously.