More Reflections Submitted by My Students from Bellarmine College Preparatory for the Global Project: “A Day in my Life During Covid-19″

Here are more reflections submitted by my students from Bellarmine College Preparatory as part of Global Student Stories Project A Day in my Life: living under the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Looking forward to sharing with my students reflections from students of other Jesuit schools around the world!

A Day in my Life – Written by Joe, 18, Bellarmine College Preparatory, USA

COVID-19 has proved to me that humans cannot sustain true connection with one another through the internet. Allegedly, we live in a world that has created the most interconnected international community in in world history – we can contact one another with the touch of a screen. COVID-19, through “shelter in place” requirements by local governments, has provided an excellent case study, providing insight to see how interconnected humans can truly be without seeing one another face to face.

My generation is mostly safe from the Coronavirus, as people with preexisting conditions and compromised immune systems are the ones who are truly susceptible to the fatal consequences of catching the disease. Yet, my generation, Generation Z, is plagued by loneliness. Even if I call my friends every single day, I still crave laughing with them and enjoying life with them. To me, COVID-19 has seemed like a forced depression.

However, many of us feel great guilt due to that feeling, as people suffering are from the loss of loved ones and medical professionals are sacrificing their health to save lives. While those losses and sacrifices are of much greater magnitude, they do not discount how my generation feels; yes, we are the iPhone generation and yet, we cannot live without one another. The emotional connection between two people is more powerful than anything that can manifest on a screen.

A Day in my Life – Written by Jonah, 18, Bellarmine College Preparatory, USA

My typical day since the outbreak of COVID-19 has been painfully average. Where I live, there is a shelter-in-place in effect which bars (not to the point of encroaching upon our freedom) us from normative social environments. As a result, pretty much every coffee shop and restaurant in the area is closed or at the very least only allows for take-out/to-go-orders.

My school has been on virtual learning for about two weeks as of now. The challenging part of this situation has been focusing and turning in assignments on time, because as a second semester senior who has already been admitted to one of his top choices for college, I suffer from chronic senioritis. The nice part about this situation is my school has changed its schedule to ease up on our adjustment process: e.g. we now start at 9:15 instead of 8:15. Somehow, this has not resulted in me getting more sleep than usual. The school has also made classes end every other day an hour early at 13:45. This has allowed me to interact more with my family, as well as spend more time focusing on some of my personal hobbies like guitar, reading about philosophy, and learning French. My school volleyball season is also postponed indefinitely (most likely won’t happen), which sucks.

In terms of my hopes and concerns, the San Francisco Bay Area shut down pretty much everything and it doesn’t seem to be working. It raises the question for me of whether social distancing is just virtue signaling and theater. It’s possible infected individuals are like walking Chernobyls and the only way to stop their radiation is by identifying them early through mass testing and sealing them off from the rest of the world.

A Day in my Life – Written by Josiah, 18, Bellarmine College Preparatory, USA 

My typical day following the COVID-19 outbreaks looks a little something like this…. Since we are quarantined, are classes are all online. First, I wake up around 10-15 minutes before my first class. This allows me enough to get some food in my stomach and prepare myself for the day’s classes. Then I start school. The school day is usually around 3-4 hours depending on the day. Then I do my homework so I can get it out of the way. Then I usually try to find something new to occupy myself with. These could either be going for a walk or playing basketball in my backyard.

I look at this whole as a blessing and a curse. Not only is the disease killing thousands of people daily but it’s also affecting virtually every aspect of our daily lives. However, the extra time at home allows me to try new things and discover new talents. It also allows me to become more organized and have a better schedule for myself. My hope is that the virus slows down, and we are permitted to go back to school so that our lives will feel normal again. For now, I will continue to get used to the new normal.

A Day in my Life – Written by JP, 18, Bellarmine College Preparatory, USA 

Since the recent outbreak of COVID-19, my daily routine has changed drastically. On a usual day, I would wake up around 7 in the morning to get ready for school. School would take up most of my day as I would spend time after school in the library to get my homework done. After school I would come home and finish whatever work needed to be done. Now that the shelter in place has happened, my days consist of constant electronic use throughout the day. I wake up around 8 to get ready for online classes. My screen time use has gone up since the quarantine because of the limited activities I can do nowadays.

I have a basketball hoop in my backyard which I play on every day now. Other than playing basketball, there is no other physical exercise I can do besides walk around the neighborhood. Walking around the neighborhood doesn’t seem to be the same just because of how judgmental some people can be about people especially during this time. Just being out in public nowadays feels like a crime. It still hasn’t hit me that the quarantine can last until the summer.

The future is so unpredictable to me because I don’t know what can happen next week. There is new news about the coronavirus that happens every week that affects so many different events and lives of people. It is hard for people to find a source of income because of how jobs have been temporally shut down. I am not used spending a lot of time with my brother and my dad, but my mother still has work during this time. So, the one positive thing I can take out of this is spending quality time with my brother and dad.

A Day in my Life – Written by Luke, 18, Bellarmine College Preparatory, USA

A typical day for me since the Coronavirus outbreak would start off waking up later since our schedule has been altered to start at 9:30 instead of the typical 8:15 and on at least two days of the week I don’t start school until 10:30 because my free period is first. But starting school later and waking up later also means that I’ve been going to bed later which I am currently trying to change so I can get back to my regular sleep schedule.

Across the country everyone is being asked to quarantine in their homes and only come outside their houses for essential reasons. My daily routine has changed because I used to go workout with my friend who is a trainer after school and now, I am not able to do that because gyms are considered as non-essential businesses to our daily functions. Luckily, I have weights at home, so I am still able to work out, but with added time at home I have been playing more videogames on Xbox. I have faith that this will be resolved with time but it is stressful to have to be in the middle of pandemic that drastically effects all of our lives and still try to continue on with normal activities such as school.