Here are more reflections on the experience of the pandemic shared by our students as part of the global student project “A Day In My Life Living Under Covid – 19”. We hope you and your students enjoy reading them.

A Day in my Life: Chandra, 14, Xavier Catholic College, Australia

The last couple of months have been a huge adventure for me the world as we knew it has completely changed. For one, my school has been moved online semi-permanently, which as affected me greatly as I require regular assistance from teachers aids. The work has been challenging as my mother works full time and is a single parent. I have not been able to seek assistance from her for my school work.

I only have one good friend outside of school and her mother is chronically ill so I have not seen her for two months which has impacted me greatly, on the other hand, it has been nice spending time with my family, including my dog Ruby. One good side of COVID 19 is that I and my dog have been on many adventures exploring creeks, gullies and bushland surrounding my home as a result of COVID 19 we have become inseparable. I have been loving the isolation as I have had the freedom to do as I please, running wild in my area, reading books and doing art. Of course, I have had to balance my adventures with school work which has been boring and endless of course I still try my best.

COVID 19 has impacted our world greatly but I feel most of the effects are positive I feel. Climate change is reversing itself which is amazing for our world and people are showing kindness to each other

again, all though the world has changed as we know it, these changes are good for our society and we can grow from them I hope.

A Day in my Life: Katelynn, 14, Xavier Catholic College, Australia

In Australia, the pandemic started out slowly and I thought nothing of it. As the COVID-19 situation went on, the  number of diagnosed cases were getting worse and there was no vaccine. The death tolls would go up slowly at the start of the month, then spiked at the end of the months. This is as when people were carrying COVID-19, they wouldn’t have any symptoms or idea that they have it and spread it to other people when they went to the shops, or went to the beach.

Due to the spread, new laws were introduced by the government. These laws included lock down. Families were forced to stay inside their own homes to reduce the spread of this pandemic. As I was not allowed out of my house, other than to do an hour or two of exercise, I was able to do many productive activities. I was able to catch up on homework, train/exercise at home, binge watch Netflix and cook.

In Australia, the COVID-19 pandemic was definitely not as deadly to us compared to many other countries, including England. I have many relatives that live in England which was scary for me as the pandemic was seriously worse there. This is as the death toll is currently in the thousands and the lock down is very serious.

These changes have impacted my daily routine in positive and negative ways. Some negatives during this pandemic include that I was not able to attend after school sport activities, go hang out with friends and not being able to go shopping. However there were positives during this pandemic, which include learning how to cook different recipes, read  more, ride more and spend time with family.

My concerns with this pandemic is that one of my family members or close friends would catch this virus and end up in hospital. I hope that soon there will be a vaccine for this deadly virus so that the world could go back to some normality.

A Day in my Life: Abbey, 14, Xavier Catholic College, Australia

This pandemic has been a slap in the face, everything we took for granted gone in the blink of an eye. The world got turned upside down quickly with no one having the time to react responsibly. People became stressed and anxious, panic buying toilet paper and frozen foods as no one knew how long this would last. My neighbourhood shopping center quickly became dead, everyone locked in their houses. Although I live in a rural area the pandemic still affected us. Australia handled the situation quite well with the exception of a small ‘what do we do’ question at the start.

My family was actually supposed to go on a trip for my dad’s 50th birthday during the quarantine, on the 15th of March we canceled the trip. Our trip was due to leave on the 2nd of april, arriving first in Morocco then travelling to Portugal then Spain and lastly stopping in Ireland to meet with my whole family for the birthday party. When the 2nd of April came my family was devastated, all of the hard planning and excitement went out the window. Instead of being too upset we cheered ourselves up with lots of homemade sweets and deserts. My sister and I started to cook dinner once a week too. I favoured homemade pasta and much more meat as my mum is vegetarian and a rarity in my house.

My days were soon filled with long sleep-ins, reading, watching a lot of netflix and learning to surf. My family quickly realised how bored my sister and I were becoming so we thought to buy some surfboards. We would go to the beach every second day, meeting another family down there but keeping our distance. My sister and I started to really enjoy it and were begging our parents every morning to take us. We live about 20 mins from the beach so getting there everyday was tough on my parents especially since neither of them were mad surfers. We started a weekly family zoom and trivia night with my mum’s nine other siblings and families. Each week a new family took on the roll of host, challenging the winners of last week. My family soon found it’s rivals: the Byron crew and my cousin’s family in Melton.

My school quickly closed down as to keep everyone safe but luckily school was going into a 2 week holiday break just as quarantine started. My family and I became grateful for the environment around us as it kept our spirits up as we watched the numbers climb. For me I never really took in the impact of the pandemic, I kept going on with life. It didn’t register in my mind until zooms started and schools became ghost yards. Schooling for me was different for sure but with my friends on facetime most of the time we pushed through. On the 25th of May we were allowed to go back to school! That monday was like the first day of school all over again, school certainly was different as tables were separated, desks had to be wiped down after usage and hand sanitiser was given out before each lesson. School is certainly different and will take us a while to adjust but we must be grateful for how lucky we have been in this time.

A Day in my Life: Ollie, 14, Xavier Catholic College, Australia

Although the COVID 19 has died down, for now, we were forced into lockdown for 2 months. During this time we learned online through zoom calls and emails. I thought I would struggle to get motivated to do work and do well in my tests but surprisingly it wasn’t too bad.

Thankfully during quarantine, we were still allowed to travel to the local beach and have a swim and a surf but we weren’t allowed to lay on the sand. Also, the surf was decent throughout quarantine with meant I was able to get up every morning and have a surf before school. When I get home I attend zooms if necessary and do the work set, then I would go for another surf or play basketball with my brother. This kept me healthy during the pandemic especially when I was forced to make my own meals which consisted of microwave pizza in the freezer and toast.

The only bad thing about the pandemic for me was that I was unable to hang out with all of my friends because of the 10 people restrictions until I was back at school. I wasn’t too keen to come back to school and I have struggled to readapt to school life and waking up early and going to bed early but it is nice to see all of my friends again.

A Day in my Life: Riley, 14, Xavier Catholic College, Australia

Over the past couple of months, my life has changed in many ways. I had to make a new daily routine and get used to being stuck at home. At first, while the virus wasn’t in Australia, all we knew about it was what was being shared on the news. Cases started popping up all around the country and eventually, we had to lock down the state and national borders and were told to only go out when we needed to. This was very effective as the cases slowed dramatically. Although our local area didn’t have as many cases as other places we still had to ensure we were staying safe.

At first, the changes came slowly such as the introduction of social distancing. Then the schools, shops and everything else started closing down. I was really happy when the school shut as I could wake up as late as I like as long as I got all the work done. Then, after my work was complete I had the rest of the day off. Although being stuck at home brought some positives, it also brought some negatives. This included not being able to go out to see my friends and do other activities. When we did go out we had to make sure we were staying safe.

Being stuck at home gave me the time to do things that I never had time to do until now. I was more productive around the house and did more chores while I was stuck at home. One thing that I didn’t get to do that I was looking forward to was my trip to France and Italy. We were scheduled to leave at the start of April and it would last for about 2 weeks. We were going to do lots of activities and it was going to be a blast. Unfortunately, the borders had been shut and there were so many cases over there that I was kind of worried about being exposed to the virus.

Being stuck at home brought many positives as well as negatives. I kept in touch with my friends and made sure I was getting my work done. I took up the challenge of working online at home and it ended up being quite easy to do. I wish I could say being with my family was nice but having a family of 8 people, it could get crowded at times. Hopefully, we can eliminate the virus and come up with a vaccine for future cases and the world can go back to normal.

A Day in my Life: Lily, 14, Xavier Catholic College, Australia

The pandemic that took the world by surprise changed everyone’s lives today. Schools cancelled, restaurants closed and small lively towns, like mine turned into ghost towns. The people in my town are lucky as we were quick to act and shut places down and told everyone to stay inside their home. Parks, benches and bus shelters were quickly taped up to prevent gatherings. Everyone was now in their houses constantly checking new reports and watching the news hoping the virus would not reach us. In my town people went into panic and started to stock up on supplies, toilet paper was a rare sight. I am not sure why people thought toilet paper would protect them but it was nowhere to be seen.

We were still going to school like usual but there were less and less people there each day, as parents’ worries started to grow. My family went everyday, at this point everyone still thought that the virus was a joke or funny. As schools around the world started to shut, people at my school were so excited for the day we could not go to school. When the day came everyone was so excited thinking it was an extra holiday, soon to realise that nothing was open and it was not going to be a normal couple of months. My family started to stock up just in case the numbers spiked and everyone was to stay inside. The numbers spiked and only people from the same family could go outside for only exercise and to go food shopping. Toilet paper was back in stock but then there was no baking materials because everyone started to bake to pass the time.

My daily routine quickly changed from going to school, to sleeping in and not doing anything all day. I picked up an exercise routine and talked to my friends daily. My family would go to the beach as they were not closed and go on daily walks with my dog. The beaches in Lennox were quick to fill up and soon it was so full that my Mum thought it was too dangerous to go. Our state borders were not closed but the Queensland border was, people from Queensland were still traveling down here for holidays. Australia was soon to go into action and the infection rate was going down everyday. This meant that the restrictions were slowly lifted and after 8 weeks of quarantine and social distancing schools were opened.

Other restrictions were still in place like to stay 1.5 metres apart and only 10 people in restaurants/pubs. Only 5 people can gather inside and 10 outside. My family cancelled our trip to NT and New Zealand and started to support local businesses to help them make money and get business running again. My sister had to celebrate her 13th birthday in our house. Overall, this experience was scary but it was good as it brought our family closer and the environment also benefited from it as well. I believe that everyone is getting too comfortable and there is going to be another spike in cases, so my school makes us sanitise our hands, desk and chairs when we leave the classroom. Hopefully everyone around the world is staying safe, bye.

A Day in my Life: Josh, 15, Xavier Catholic College, Australia

In the past 8 weeks my life has changed in many ways. My life has been turned around and everyone had to make new daily routines. At first the pandemic started in Wuhan, China. Everyone knew that the virus would soon be spreading to Australia. When it hit Australia everyone was unaware of what the symptoms were so no one knew if they had it or not.

At first, a couple of changes came in place like social distancing and people had to stay home if they were sick. After that schools, shops, and lots of other things started closing down. Soon many people started to leave school and the attendance was getting lower and people started to take precautions. All people were soon in lockdown and I went into online learning. There are consolations to online learning like doing all of your work then chilling for the rest of the day and being able to go outside whenever you want. There are also desolations to online learning like you can’t keep concentration and not always getting clear instructions for work.

This pandemic has made me feel grateful for what we have. I am lucky enough to be able to connect with friends via different social media and online games. This experience has made me feel lucky that I am in a place that will not really be affected and it made my relationship grow with my family. So overall I am safe and hope everyone is self isolating to keep everyone else safe and hope this is over soon.

A Day in my Life: Izaiah, 14, Xavier Catholic College, Australia

In the past couple of months, things have been very quiet in our neighbouring area. The cars have stopped making their way to the now closed and barricaded 4 wd track beach access, surf groups have stopped migrating out on the beachfront, the lake had few visitors and the tables and bbq areas were lined off with bright red ribbons to prevent people from gathering together in public. The words “unprecedented” were appearing on every media outlet screaming deaths, high numbers of people were dying all around the world, the world was becoming a scary place to be in with all the fear circulating everywhere.

We spent most of our time together as a family and that was really great as we hadn’t spent so much time together. My mum is an essential worker at a primary school but my dad’s employment had slowed down due to COVID-19. This provided my dad time to work on things at the camp he had been unable to do during the busy season. The really unusual feeling was we were not able to visit friends, family, and travel interstate unless you met the criteria of travel.

I am grateful for the blessing of family and love that my parents show towards the community, how they can help others by cooking dinners, and supporting them during COVID19. Also supporting me through a new learning avenue with the school. That has been challenging. Many people are displaced, have lost their jobs, their place of safety, and ultimately their lives. Let’s be grateful for the blessing of health and life. Life, as we knew it before, is slowly returning but may not be the normal we once knew.

A Day in my Life: Tate, 14, Xavier Catholic College, Australia

Covid-19 is under fairly good control in Australia. There are 7,109 confirmed cases and 102 deaths. Rules on social isolation have been implemented to limit the spread of covid-19 in our community.

The social isolation change drastically affected my daily routine. Usually I’d be waking up at 6:20 to get ready for school, now I was naturally waking up at 8:00 to check my emails for the work that had been set for the day. To avoid getting distracted from my work me and a couple of friends would jump in a call whilst we worked. It was a good supplement for the lack of communication. Another work around the lack of communication was playing an array of online games with my friends. The holidays were a whole other story. I imagined that the holidays would be essentially the same as how it usually was but I didn’t realise how many of my usual holiday activities I’d be missing out on. Holidays for me would usually include camping as well as hanging out and riding around town with my friends. Now I was stuck inside and going to the beach with my family at unpopular times to avoid seeing others.

It wasn’t all bad, with the lack of people on roads there was less smog which is very beneficial to our environment. We also began to see a decrease in litter. I feel as if society and the world around us has learnt how big of an impact we can make if we work together and I hope we are able to use this new found teamwork to help fix other issues that are prevalent around us.