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I started to write this piece sometime around the end of October. I worked on it in my home because I don’t go to in-person school anymore. I wrote it on a laptop often with my dog’s snout getting in the way.

My writing relates to being a teenager during this year because nowadays most teens that I know have strong opinions about my topic which is racial injustice and police brutality. I thought sharing my experience would show people that teenagers are aware of police brutality and the broken justice system. We teenagers are angry with how police are handling things. We want to see things change.

I don’t want to live in a world where as a person of color I have to keep my hood down, my hands out of my pockets and my eyes on the ground. That is why I wrote this piece.

So for this project it was kind of hard for me to spend time. I usually worked on it during English class and only sometimes after. I think the reason I had bad time management was because of work from other classes and a little bit of procrastination. Other than not working on it, this project wasn’t too hard. I did have some difficulties writing it though. The biggest problem was the word limit. I had to cut down lots of words because I did not know there was a word limit. I had about 900 words before I cut it down to 450. I wrote all of this in my room at my desk. It was a perfect place to write it and I felt very relaxed.

I decided to write in essay form because that was probably the best way to express myself. I could write everything that happened to me with words to express my feelings and emotions. It was hard to keep it under the word limit because so much has happened this year. I basically put everything that was important to me though. I am very happy with how this turned out because it gave me the opportunity to write my feelings and it gave me a better understanding as to how this year has been. It definitely helped me relieve stress by talking about this year.

In conclusion, This project helped me see the bad side of this year but also the good side. I had a lot of happy thoughts when writing this because it made me remember early quarantine. It’s odd to feel “nostalgic” about the early months of this year but I do. I am happy with this project and I hope other people like it as well. Thank you for this opportunity.

School has always included a lot of social activity. Rock climbing, on the other hand, is more of a solo sport because, while I work with teammates, I only rely on myself when I’m on the wall.

When COVID hit, school transitioned to online, and I lost touch with a lot of my classmates. As an eighth grader in a K-8 school, my last real school day with the classmates I’d been with for nine years came and went without any of us realizing. Our big eighth grade trip to Costa Rica, which we’d all been looking forward to since kindergarten, got cancelled. While normally I would have celebrated graduation next to all of my classmates following meaningful traditions, I instead spent the day squished into my living room couch in front of a screen with only my family.

Climbing was almost the complete opposite. An activity I’d always done for myself became one of my only ways to see people face-to-face. Though my climbing gym shut down, I was able to spend time rock climbing outdoors safely with friends.

During the summer, I played digital games with my friends, went to zoom calls with my family, participated in remote camps, and even had an online summer institute for my new school. But through all of this, climbing was a constant, and a way to see people in-person.

I created my project on Adobe Spark. This layout makes it easy to weave pictures and text together. It controls the photos people look at so they see one at a time and it is clear what text goes with which photo. I used images I took during the pandemic, but I wrote this piece specifically for this submission.

Recently, it’s been easy to focus on only the bad. Yes, I missed out on the last three months I’d ever have at my school, my entire summer was upended, and I had to venture into a new high school remotely. But I was still able to do the sport I love and use that activity to see my friends. Through these hectic and overwhelming times, climbing has truly been my rock - no pun intended.

When creating my poem, I sat on my bed, the place where I spent majority of my 2020 year. It was at night when the idea struck me that I should do a poem since I have a nice interest into that type of literature. Every thought and feeling I could pull from my brain of how 2020 went made its way onto my computer as I typed. Struggling with mental health, BLM movements, and of course the pandemic. As a teen I have a lot going on for me and the world most likely already has one story stereotypes on teens. We have a voice that needs to be heard by everyone. From ideas of how to fix schools to how to help our community. We can stand hand in hand (Figuratively because of the pandemic) and help our world with each step we take. But for that to happen we need everyone’s voice heard. My poem relates to the theme of being a teen in the year of 2020 because during quarantine a lot of people changed and a lot of teens have either become mature or struggling with mental health problems. It also talks about the BLM movement within this year and how as teens we can help. Overall, my poem shows that as teens we should not be overlooked because we can do so much more than what others think

I started this piece halfway through October and finished it on 11/11. I used an application called Krita to create it. This piece shows a lot of my experience with 2020, especially the pandemic. It shows how schools closed and I had to take learning virtually, how I slowly started getting disconnected from friends, and the insomnia I suddenly had to deal with. And during those sleepless nights, I would think. I would think about the time when I could go to school and see my friends every day, about the time where I could go in public not having to worry about what I’m touching and breathing, about the time when people didn’t seem so divided, but most of all, about the time when everything was alright. These sleepless nights lasted forever, every time leaving me more empty than the last. And the moment everything turned completely dark, the sun would rise. Every day the sun kept rising and that would keep me going. A new day meant a new opportunity. The sun would always remind me of how beautiful the world is and it would push me to keep going, to see what the future holds for me.

I started this project when it was assigned in my english class during the first month of my freshman year. It was a wild first year project but I expect nothing less from 2020. I created this piece in Philadelphia and the entirety of the story takes place here in philly, my home. The beginning of this pandemic started almost a year ago now so it’s hard to pin point exactly how my story began, but I can safely say it started as any normal cliche pandemic movie or book starts. “I never expected it to end up like this, but I guess we just didn’t want to think what this plaque could really turn out to be” Type Deal. If it wasn’t already obvious as to how my story relates to this, this story reflects on my thoughts and experiences during the pandemic. It encompasses the coming weeks before lockdown and how my school reacted to these sudden closings of schools through out the district.

When I was younger, I wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to be a teenage rock star living a double life. But here I am now, a teenager, living in a time during covid-19. I decided to write a love letter to my electric guitar because when I think about covid, the first thing that comes to mind is growth. I feel like in some ways my electric guitar has taught me so many things. It taught me to find beauty in a hopeless place. When covid first hit the world, I was terrified. I would sit at home overthinking everything. Over thinking about death, my family and friends, and thinking about everything that can go wrong. I have really bad anxiety and usually how I cope with it is by hanging out with my friends, but now with covid, I can’t escape. There was no one I could turn to and covid was was corrupting my mind. This was also the time when I haven’t played my electric guitar for a little over a year. I remember I’ve always been interested in music, ever since I was about two years old. When I decided to learn electric guitar, I was so passionate about it I would put all my time and energy into learning new songs and melodies. But once school started, my electric guitar was left untouched. I wanted my letter to capture how much music helped me get through these hard times that were extremely rough for me. My passion will always be my safe place, and covid really amplified that hypothesis making it more true every single day. When I first played my electric guitar during quarantine, I was really rusty. I was so focused on getting it right that I perfected a song in one sitting. I wasn’t thinking about covid for the first time ever. I was at peace for the first time in forever and that’s when I realized that music was truly my first love. When I was younger, I wanted to be a rock star. But who would have thought that I would just be a normal teenager, playing her maple amber wood guitar in a world full of catastrophe. So if I ever fulfill my childhood dream of being a rock star, thank you covid for helping me fall so deeply in love with music all over again.

I don’t think anyone imagined 2020 being like this, keeping 6 feet apart from each other, not having normal in-person classes, and staying inside almost all day. Along with a pandemic, the crumbling of the rest of the world & economy is there too. In this image, my mom and my younger brother are standing apart from each other while wearing masks. I decided to take this photograph at a school that’s been under construction since I was young, since it shows how things take a long time to be repaired. This school is walking distance from my home. I have seen this building almost every single day on my way home, and I’ve always wondered when it would finally be finished. The day I took this picture, I actually saw a construction worker’s car leaving the premises. Finally, this place is being fixed up!

I know things take a while to be put back together if they are deeply damaged. For example, people are fighting for their religions, their people, their rights, and themselves. People are making their points through actions instead of words. The BLM movement has been a really big part of 2020, and to make change, some people would loot businesses. I live in West Philadelphia, and some places that were raided and looted happened very close to my home; this hurts, because these are places the community go to shop and live their daily lives. It brings sadness that people have to show their feelings through this type of action. If nobody listens, they have to take action. Still, my family supports this movement, because equality between all races is right, and everyone should be treated as an equal no matter their status, skin color, or ethnicity.

When I took this picture, the weather was chilly, and the sky wasn’t as bright, which caused the color of the image to be more dull. I was satisfied with this, because this year hasn’t been very bright from the pandemic and the personal and political conflicts we’ve faced. It has been a year for change and coming together, and hopefully things will be fixed so we can live normally next year. 2020 has been a building that’s been in repair for far too long, and slowly we’re working together to put it back together.

This piece of writing was created on Wednesday, November 11th at 10:00pm. I created this piece on a laptop at home, with the help of google docs. I made this piece come to life, by applying my thoughts and feelings into a brief, yet powerful, essay. My writing relates to the theme of being a teenager during this tumultuous year, because I was able to dive down into the core of a topic that’s not being talked about as much as it should. This topic of racism is being ignored, yet pushed to the point where people want it to be forgotten: ignored. Being a teenager in this generation is not as easy as one may think. There are a lot of consequences, injustices, oppression, chaos, and much more that my generation faces. I have chosen to use my voice to speak on something that others may fear to speak on; afraid of the threats and hatred that will be planted onto them making the eyes of the oppressor watch them. I have decided to speak on the world pandemic, no not the coronavirus but the other racism. I want you and others to know that BLM is more than a trend, that we are just as worthy as our oppressors.

I started this Contest I wanna say in early October for a school project. I worked on it, really the only place I could right now, at home. I was originally going to do an essay but then it started to become mostly informational and not my feeling, which isn’t how I wanted it to turn out. So I did a letter (as you can tell) because I felt like I could really put in information and then mold my feelings around it without sounding so formal. Instead of completely focusing on how 2020 has affected me (Gen Z) I chose to write about the ways that Donald Trump has handled 2020 and how that has affected me (Gen Z). The way he has handled 2020 has not only affected out now but also our future. That’s really an awful thing. If things like corona had been handled with more care so many would still be alive and we wouldn’t be in the place we are in now. If he had just taken one second to actually hear what we have to say about police brutality then maybe, just maybe it would have gotten just a little bit better.

The pandemic has been an emotional ride. And since so much emotion can be shown in music, I wanted to make a dynamic composition that represented my own feelings throughout these past months. The beginning of my song represents “normal” life. For this, I took one of the most common “pop” chord progressions: I-V-vi-IV, and played a basic rhythm on guitar, with some simple drums. It’s a boring, basic resting place, but we accept it as normal. I then abruptly cut the intro so the happy music spins down and is replaced by distorted drums and a mood of confusion. This is the time of chaos where the song creates a “wait, what?” feeling, like when I suddenly couldn’t go to school or see my friends. After this section it switches to an uncertain mood. In the beginning of the pandemic during lockdown, I remember my parents being scared that they or our friends were going to get COVID. I remember sitting on the couch and feeling like all of the chaos was circling around me and I was just confused. I didn’t understand what was really happening, to be honest I was just inconvenienced. At the end of the third section it starts to speed up, creating a very unpleasant feeling. Each bar the tempo increases which makes me feel really unsettled, and reflects the weird “what?” moments of the pandemic. The fast tempo also creates a scared feeling. I remember being out in public with my parents around people, and finally being really scared. I was scared that my family was going to get COVID and I couldn’t stand that. At the end of my song I took the opening guitar, but reversed it to make it sound sadder and more emotional. I also pitched it up to create a kind of spooky uncanny feeling. What we’re in now is like a mixed up, reversed way of normal life. I go to virtual school and everywhere with a mask. This is our “new normal,” and I’ve fallen into a new rhythm.

My concept is that we have so much time being trapped at home but once you start to think about it, you can’t recall what you’ve done. It’s like it never happened. I am a reflective person and when I can’t remember what I did today, then did today even happen? Everyone is in quarantine nowadays, so there is more time to reflect on yourself. It’s not something many people do on a day to day basis. Then there’s other things going on and it makes it even harder to focus on yourself but then we can’t block out everything and pretend it’s not happening. Sometimes it’s like we have nowhere to run. It feels as if this is never going to end. It’s been hard to constantly have a positive mindset being thrown into a situation like this. As a freshman, I lost my chance of making friends and walking into my school to meet all my kind teachers. I’m stuck with awkward zoom calls everyday with people that I never met before. I definitely know I’m not the only one that is going through this. I have a sister in senior year and she lost her homecoming. It was something she was looking forward to and I bet many others were too. We are all at loss. We can only go up from here. We all know social media has been a lifesaver during this crisis but it’s not always as helpful. Social media has definitely gone more toxic during this time period. We are all constantly breathing down each other’s throats trying to find some sort of drama or entertainment, and if there isn’t any, make some. For me personally, I have seen toxicity gone up and it has affected me. Teens of our generation rule social media. If someone is not as educated then that’s their problem but once they bring it to a platform and speak about false claims, it’s everyone’s problem now. It’s just if you engage or not. I wanted to write about our “loss” time because it’s not something people think about. I believe we can all be productive during this crisis in our own ways but sitting there isn’t going to help. Time is precious especially now. There is no going back so moving forward is the only path we have.

Creating this piece was such an amazing experience and a great way for me personally to reflect on this crazy year. My first step was to read through a journal I had kept, starting January 1st 2020 and writing in it everyday since. I decided on entries that I thought really reflected my 2020, entries from the day George Floyd was murdered by the minneapolis police, or the day I found out school shut down because of the Coronavirus, or starting high school online, and the last time I hugged a friend before quarantine. I took pictures of all of these entries and with my dads help printed them out, along with a few news headlines that I had found that I thought tied the journal entries together. After I had glued down my journal entries, in a format similar to a timeline of 2020 and added the news headlines I began to annotate my entries, seeing if any predictions I had were correct, and answering questions my past self had about the future, or really describing some of the things I had been feeling at the time I wrote the entry. The final piece I added to the board was an old mask of mine, with one of the straps connected to a headline I had written on my poster board, “new normal” because wearing a mask is the new normal, it’s something that I never leave the house without, so while certain things have gone back to the way they were before the pandemic a lot will never be the same. Being a teenager during this year was so hard in many ways. And I think that my project does a very good job of showing both the good, the bad, and all of my other feelings as a teenager in 2020. Keeping a journal this year was something that really helped me get through some of the bad times and emotions I was having. So I think to use some of those journal entries as the center point of my project really relates well to theme of being a teenager in 2020. During this year a lot has changed and I have had to adjust to a new normal of life, doing this project was such a good way to show all of my feelings and thoughts about this year, and to illustrate the good and bad.

Many can say that quarantine has been hard, and we have all been forced out from the busy nature of our daily lives. However, I can say that quarantine has humbled me, grounded me and allowed me to realize that there are many pockets of peace in our daily lives, but it is up to us to appreciate them and hold onto them for as long as possible. Furthermore, quarantine has allowed me to learn a lot about life that I wouldn’t know if this pandemic didn’t happen. For instance, I have learned that sometimes you have to put others before yourself and this speaks true to me because I understand that some people have higher risks and that I shouldn’t be irresponsible and selfish. Sometimes, when I think about my experience before the pandemic I realize that sometimes good things and blessing come in disguise and that although the pandemic is a horrific thing it has changed me for the better. Making me more open minded, selfless and hard working in order to navigate the new world that has been presented to us.

Many can say that quarantine has been hard, and we have all been forced out from the busy nature of our daily lives. However, I can say that quarantine has humbled me, grounded me and allowed me to realize that there are many pockets of peace in our daily lives, but it is up to us to appreciate them and hold onto them for as long as possible. Furthermore, quarantine has allowed me to learn a lot about life that I wouldn’t know if this pandemic didn’t happen. For instance, I have learned that sometimes you have to put others before yourself and this speaks true to me because I understand that some people have higher risks and that I shouldn’t be irresponsible and selfish. Sometimes, when I think about my experience before the pandemic I realize that sometimes good things and blessing come in disguise and that although the pandemic is a horrific thing it has changed me for the better. Making me more open minded, selfless and hard working in order to navigate the new world that has been presented to us.

Many can say that quarantine has been hard, and we have all been forced out from the busy nature of our daily lives. However, I can say that quarantine has humbled me, grounded me and allowed me to realize that there are many pockets of peace in our daily lives, but it is up to us to appreciate them and hold onto them for as long as possible. Furthermore, quarantine has allowed me to learn a lot about life that I wouldn’t know if this pandemic didn’t happen. For instance, I have learned that sometimes you have to put others before yourself and this speaks true to me because I understand that some people have higher risks and that I shouldn’t be irresponsible and selfish. Sometimes, when I think about my experience before the pandemic I realize that sometimes good things and blessing come in disguise and that although the pandemic is a horrific thing it has changed me for the better. Making me more open minded, selfless and hard working in order to navigate the new world that has been presented to us.

Many can say that quarantine has been hard, and we have all been forced out from the busy nature of our daily lives. However, I can say that quarantine has humbled me, grounded me and allowed me to realize that there are many pockets of peace in our daily lives, but it is up to us to appreciate them and hold onto them for as long as possible. Furthermore, quarantine has allowed me to learn a lot about life that I wouldn’t know if this pandemic didn’t happen. For instance, I have learned that sometimes you have to put others before yourself and this speaks true to me because I understand that some people have higher risks and that I shouldn’t be irresponsible and selfish. Sometimes, when I think about my experience before the pandemic I realize that sometimes good things and blessing come in disguise and that although the pandemic is a horrific thing it has changed me for the better. Making me more open minded, selfless and hard working in order to navigate the new world that has been presented to us.

Many can say that quarantine has been hard, and we have all been forced out from the busy nature of our daily lives. However, I can say that quarantine has humbled me, grounded me and allowed me to realize that there are many pockets of peace in our daily lives, but it is up to us to appreciate them and hold onto them for as long as possible. Furthermore, quarantine has allowed me to learn a lot about life that I wouldn’t know if this pandemic didn’t happen. For instance, I have learned that sometimes you have to put others before yourself and this speaks true to me because I understand that some people have higher risks and that I shouldn’t be irresponsible and selfish. Sometimes, when I think about my experience before the pandemic I realize that sometimes good things and blessing come in disguise and that although the pandemic is a horrific thing it has changed me for the better. Making me more open minded, selfless and hard working in order to navigate the new world that has been presented to us.

2020 hasn’t been the best way to welcome the new decade. It sure has been a roller coaster, Virus, Police brutality, and it’s election year. Yet the world has corona, but America is having so many more problems than just a virus. The sad part is that these problems aren’t new, they have been seen for so long, but no one makes a change. I made a drawing to represent what my 2020 looks like in my point of view. People protest for a change, but yet they wear masks, because there’s a virus around them. President Donal Trump is seen walking away, refusing to hear his people. This puts a single story into Americans, people see american as an unfair place, and it shouldn’t be like that. We are slowly making America ungreat. This is also why I made the background as the american flag burning. It’s not a hateful way, but because America is slowly burning, people aren’t heard and find a way to be heard. They start to destroy stores and burning stuff. Yet, the president still walks away from it. The BLM movement has been coming out a lot, seeing this as a chance to be heard, many other movements have also come out to make their problems known. America, hasn’t also been the only place in the world with pain, other countries have been fighting for survival. As a teen living in this country, I have felt unsafe, and sometimes worried about my family. We have tried to stay safe in quarantine, we try and spend time together, and it’s a good way to get closer to your loved ones. But with the countrys actions of treating non-white people is worrying. I’ve seen in the news that kids are being put in cages like animals in the border. Sometimes, I think, what if it was me? What if it was my siblings?. It’s not much about me, but my siblings. I can’t do much being 14, but if I had much more power, I would use it for good. 2021 is around the corner and everyone is praying for a better year, with a better view. Time is being wasted, lifes are being taken, it’s a change for today.

For my coming of age in 2020 The New York Times submission, I wrote a seven-page six-part ten paragraph essay chronicling the events that affected my life during the COVID nineteen pandemic. This project took me a month to make with breaks in between. In my essay, I implemented many multiple media aspects into my essay with news headlines from websites such as NBC Philadelphia, inquirer.com, and philasd.org, and some photos of my day to day life. I wrote an essay about my time during the COVID nineteen pandemic to share my experiences, emotions, opinions, and struggles that many other people my age have faced during this tumultuous year.

I specifically wanted to write a letter to the audience about self love and how someone else’s opinion could affect you. I made this in late October 2020 as a school project and as a strong message to the people who watch it. I originally was going to submit a piece of paper with all the same things written on it but then I decided to make a video. I went with the format of a lyrics video because it will be eye catching to watch and visually understandable.

I think this connects to the theme because even though insecurities were already a thing before this year, I recently have been thinking more about myself and how others think of me since we are all locked in our house. With no human contact, many people can start thinking bad and the internet is a big influence since we can’t see each other. I made this to hopefully reassure people that no matter what situation, you should always be yourself. 

Of course I didn’t just boringly repeat “be yourself” over and over again in the video but instead use my motto which is to be “perfectly imperfect.” It might sound very cheesy but I genuinely think that perfect can be anything is our eyes whether or not someone else has an opinion on it. Many believe that perfect isn’t real and that when I think they’re wrong. In their eyes it can be imperfect while in yours it’s perfect so technically in a good way, you’re perfectly imperfect.

I wouldn’t say I have completely accepted myself and that I don’t care what others think of me but that’s what I’m trying to progress in even when I was making this video. I have accepted most of my flaws and I do realize I am not perfect and I will never be perfect but if I can fully embrace myself and acknowledge all the positive things in my life, I will happily say I am perfectly okay with that.

This whole video project is dedicated to the people in the generation younger than me who cares about their reputation and looks more than what reality is. Hopefully my project will help people improve themselves and help them through this horrible time. Also to help make them realize what’s important in life.