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2020 has been a rough year for everyone, but for some people it has been extraordinary hard, the teenagers. Teenagers already live a hard life outside of covid and covid definitely made their lives more stressful. So I decided to interview my brother, who is a teenager living in chaotic times. I asked him a series of questions regarding recent events. Although my project isn’t the best, it’s unique. It shows what a teenager thinks about in these modern times.

This piece is a self portrait, of sorts, that shows me at every year of my life. It is an attempt to encompass what coming of age in 2020 looks like. I thought, “what is more 2020 than a Zoom meeting?” This is a Zoom meeting between myself in 2020 and my younger selves that represents how the different parts of me all make up who I am today. I created this piece by sifting through the many pictures of me growing up, choosing one from each year, and editing the pictures to look like somebody took a screenshot of a zoom meeting between all the different years. I worked on it over a few weeks, changing my mind about which pictures to use about every two seconds, before finally deciding on the final pictures. It was fun to look back at all the pictures of me and my family throughout the years and see how we have all changed. It also felt like stepping into a different world;sitting on my couch in quarantine but at the same time watching myself grow up. I scrolled through pictures of countless birthday parties, Hanukkahs, New Years, family gatherings, new additions to the family, and quite a few temper tantrums. I think a big part of coming of age is looking back through your past, because your past is what shaped the person you are today. Coming of age and being a teenager is about becoming your own person and being more independent. I think that in 2020 coming of age looks very different from other years. I can’t break away from my parents in the same way because I have to stay home with them all the time. I can’t be a teenagerout with my friends like I wish I could be, because there is a global pandemic. So instead of coming of age in the normal way, we have been forced to come of age in a different way, by looking back at our past, who we were, who we are today, and who we want to be in the future. Who I will be in 2021 hasn’t fully joined the Zoom meeting yet, because as 2020 draws to a close and we enter 2021,we will all become different people, and who knows what those people will be like.

I created this piece in my home because I can’t go anywhere else. The way I made this project was through research. Research, through my own drawings. I went back through old notebooks and drawing pads, and saw through my old self to show how I was like back then. And then, I drew what was on my mind about recent events, and the overall world. I then cut out every drawing and image and pasted them all together into a big collage. It also works as a timeline, because it goes from top to bottom. (old to new). This relates to the theme by showing how my mind is working during this time, and how it has changed from before. And I am, in fact, a teenager, so my mind will work the same. My drawings will show how my teen mind sees things, and what it wants or likes.

I created this over the course of September throughout November. When the contest was first introduced to me, I knew I had to write about TikTok. I thought it would be somewhat original but it would also PERFECTLY explain my quarantine experience and others. It relates to the theme because it is explaining the impact of an app that got extremely popular over the course of this pandemic. It gives an inside look into how this app has shaped mine and other’s personalities and beliefs. That’s what we were supposed to show, right? Something that has shaped our year, quarantine, and this pandemic lifestyle we all now have to endure. Now that’s why I think my work fits so perfectly into the theme.

How I created this essay was kind of complicated like quarantine because I never did anything like this, it was heart wrenching for me. When I started to create my “masterpiece” I didn’t know what to create, all I knew is I wanted to show my photography but what to photograph. So I asked my mom, my mom was pretty excited about this project (unlike me at the time), she had ideas for what I should photograph and I actually liked her ideas. So I set a date on when I should take the photos, it was perfect until I noticed that I didn’t have a battery charger for my camera. So we went online to buy a charger.

5 days later… the package came but the postman didn’t knock on our door so the package got stolen, I was distressed on how I have to wait another week for another battery charger to come and on top of that this was the first time we ever got a package stolen from us so it was just a lose-lose-lose for me and so I set a new date for when I should take my photos.

A week later… the package arrived, I was so excited to charge my camera battery after all these months, I charged my battery and waited for tomorrow to take my pictures.

The next day… I was excited to take photos of my city, Iwas ready so I got changed and waited for my parents. We went out and my mom had suggestions for where I should take my photos, I thought they would be irrelevant but actually turned out well. I took my photos in City hall, The Love park, and Chinatown, I was surprised by how the pictures turned out but I chose the photo that was in Chinatown and City hall.

After all of that happened I sat down on my chair and started writing my essay to show what these pictures mean to me, the first try I wrote my essay… fail, The second time I tried… fail but the third try…SUCCESS. Finally I was finished with my essay. So I had my mom check what I wrote and she said that it is a good story on how I express what being in quarantine meant. I was happy that she approved of it and happy that I enjoyed this project.

Click above for a look at my project!

Artist’s Statement- For this project, I wanted to create something that highlighted the imperfections of 2020. A calendar, I thought, was the best way to do this, because calendars give an overview of the events in a given month. As I gave it more thought, I decided that it was the way to go because, using a calendar, I wouldn’t need many words to sum up 2020 from my point of view. I think it’s really cool to be able to tell a story using very few words and not even complete sentences! As you may have noticed, I used 3 different colors of text on the calendar. Blue text means it was scheduled to happen already, purple means it was scheduled or rescheduled because of the pandemic, and red means it was a bad thing that was scheduled or rescheduled because of the pandemic. I made my calendar by reflecting on the events of this year and writing everything down along with their approximate dates. Next, I created a calendar template and filled it in according to my memories of 2020 so far. In true calendar spirit, I added my own pictures for each month that help tell the story of what happened that month. I hope there are no more red events to add to my catastrophic calendar this year!

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.

Man 2020 has been a year and that’s all it has going for it. So I decided to do a podcast about it. I asked my siblings who range from 17-24 and asked them to join a discord server and talk for 10 minutes then edited it for a bit to get it to just under 2 minutes to meet the guidelines. But enough of the process lets talk about why it is relevant Well I think it is relevant because we talked about things that happened this year and we all had different viewpoints and experiences. Another thing about this project that I like is that it felt really real (because it was) due to it practically being a conversation between friends and family. It is a shame that the project was so short, I was only able to get two minutes of audio. So that is why I made an extended cut of the podcast. You can find the cut on my personal school YouTube channel if you are interested or interested. And that is my submission for NYT Coming of Age in 2020 project/competition

Notice: the extended cut is not a part of the submission it’s only there for those who want to see it.

Link to extended cut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw3mXAMlAcE

My submission was a short letter to parents, talking about the connection parents should have with their kids especially during corona. 3/5 students polled think their parents dont understand what they are going through. It’s a Parents Job to be there for their kid. The more everyone tries to support one another, the better everyone will be during these times. So in conclusion my letter was asking parents to check up on their kids and see how they are really doing, it goes a long way.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eFZta-U3Ytin-alHxbAU_psQEvPSf7trDkNIcRvXcC0/edit#slide=id.ga122ece460_0_15

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1B6hV_ViMzwh9YGfePWYKhneeQu7gQ0SpcZ4ncL6SbYk/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zBuvE24oXHx0_oJAi7BqqUINnLlsrzXZ5psyffnGbd0/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dCK5lOFAYDPh76iqaJhYBBB-O2n9IzMJly-EAQc2-y0/edit