I am delighted to share the following reflections submitted by my students from Gonzaga College in Ireland as part of Global Student Stories Project A Day in my Life: living under the Covid-19 Pandemic. My students look forward to reading their peers’ reflections from other Jesuit schools around the world.

A Day in my Life – Written by Charlie, 14, Gonzaga College SJ, Ireland 

My daily routine has changed drastically form this worsening pandemic. It has restricted me from leaving my house, for none other than essential business (I.e. food, taking care of elderly) However, these measurements have only been set for our personal safety and will save countless lives. Already the virus has killed 38,000, and there have been diagnosed 750,000 cases with many more likely infected. The Corona virus is not only damaging people’s health but it also immensely damaging job careers. Some have been ordered to work from home and others have lost their jobs entirely.  

In the modern world society, we live in it was very hard to see a virus putting the majority of the world on lockdown, yet here we are. For me, it has alarmed me about potential threats and why we should be taking hygiene very seriously, the corona virus has also made me to not take health for you and loved ones for granted.  

For young ones, the virus is not a big deal health-wise, but elderlies or people with underlined health conditions this virus is life threatening and that is the restricting measurements have been set in place. In my opinion, only the likes of China and parts of Italy have seen the worst of this deadly virus, but for other 1st world countries (England, America) unfortunately their epidemic is only beginning.  

As I said before my daily routine has been changed drastically, but it has been more than reasonable for these rules to be set had potentially even to tighten these rules .”

A Day in my Life Written by Ciaran, 14, Gonzaga College SJ, Ireland 

Since all the schools around Ireland shutdown, I have been doing pretty much the same things every day. Every morning (except weekends) I wake up at 7:30 to get dressed, make my bed, have my breakfast, brush my teeth and set up my books and my laptop for the day. I start my work, whether it be doing assignments or attending online classes, and that goes on until 10:30. 

At 10:30 I go downstairs to have a snack and to have a break from work for 20 minutes. Then, at 10:50 I go back upstairs to continue with my work and classes until 12:10. That is when my lunch would have started in school, so I go downstairs again to have a sandwich. After 40 minutes of that, I go back to my room to finish off my days work.

When it’s all over, me, my brother, my mam and my dad go to the park to play hurling and to exercise for a while. Then we come back to wait until dinner and after dinner we sometimes bring my dog on a nice walk. When we get back from the walk my brother and I either watch a movie or some T.V. or go upstairs and read our books until going to bed.

Some of the biggest changes for us are not being able to play hurling matches or not being able to go to music and see our friends. There are some positive things that the Covid-19 has caused though – like being able to spend more time with our families or being able to appreciate the smaller things in life. ”

A Day in my Life – Written by Harvey, 14, Gonzaga College SJ, Ireland 

The corona virus has impacted everybody hugely. Recently the number of cases in Ireland has decreased so much and I hope it continues to decrease so that everything can go back to normal. My daily routine consists of getting up every morning at 8:30 to eat my breakfast and have started work by 9 o’clock. I have a break at 11:15-11:45. I Finnish work and have lunch at 1:30. I exercise from 2-4. My exercise includes maybe running, doing gym work or maybe passing a ball with my brothers. After exercise I will do jobs such as yesterday I helped clean out my side passage. Then dinner is at 6 o’clock. I have free time to go on my phone or play video games for the rest of the night.

I hope this situation doesn’t last. Many people we love and care for are at risk and we need to protect them. In my opinion this virus is here for a reason. For example the ozone layer is healing quickly and global warming is being affected because there are no cars or big factories working. I have heard comments such as ‘This could be the earth fighting back’. I agree with those comments because we have been damaging the earth forever. When we come out of quarantine, we are all going to be better people. “

A Day in my Life – Written by Niall, 14, Gonzaga College SJ, Ireland

In my country the government has issued a lockdown a few days ago, due to this there is not many people outside and the only reason people are allowed to go outside for are essential trips such as shopping.

So far I have not been able to witness what impact COVID-19 will have on my personal life as for the past 19 days I was self isolating as I was sick for a little over a week and is recommend to self isolate for 14 days and 5 day without any symptoms. Due to this I have mainly been stuck in my room. One of the things I missed the most wasn’t playing games with my friend or my dog but surprisingly the schoolwork which I couldn’t do because even though I am finally out of my room it has probably been worse than all the days I was sick combined. Because I was too sick to join classes and I couldn’t use any of my books I now have and extreme amount of work to do and also have to learn how to use teams meetings and zoom as well as finding a working microphone before my classes start tomorrow as well as getting fully up to date in the subject I have tomorrow. Last night I stayed up much later than usual simply catching up on what seems to be an endless stream of work however I am now left with just some French and a lot of Math and Irish luckily I don’t have Irish or French tomorrow but I still have a presentation to record for English, a CSPE reflection book and 73 maths questions to do as soon as possible.

However although I could constantly see the looming pile of work getting larger and larger by the hour being in self isolation really helped me reflect and be grateful for things like my mother so constantly for the 19 days always made sure I had enough to drink, enough tissues and more or less whatever I needed. It also made me reflect on although the virus is physically pushing us apart with social distancing self isolation and the lock downs it really has brought us together mentally and spiritually as one big global community fighting against the virus.

One thing I realised was that the most important things in times like these is surprisingly not toilet paper but rather kindness. What people really need at the moment is others such as Dan Price a CEO who amongst all the uncertainty and people losing their job cuts his own pay down to $0 from $275000 so he can ensure none of his employees are laid off (source: https://mynorthwest.com/1795811/gravity-payments-dan-price-salary-cut-coronavirus/). So we should all see what kind acts we could try to do such as calling and elderly neighbour to keep them company and make sure they are ok or maybe donating to help fund research or even more obscure things such as Folding@home a project that allows you to use your computers spare computing power when you are say browsing the internet or typing a word document to help develop a cure.

With this virus we need to work together as a global community not only so we can solve the current crisis but also so we can be better prepared to fight the next pandemic. And one last thing remember no matter where you are or what you are doing there is always some way to help from donating money to donating computing power to raising the moral of those around you there is always a way to help. “