Last year, when the lockdown was announced nationwide, I felt very excited at the thought of not going to school anymore and getting a break from studies. I had thought that this would go on for a couple of days and once the situation becomes better, everything would be back to normal. But then, the days turned into months, and I never expected it to go on for a whole year!
As the days passed, I got bored of staying at home. I realised that I won’t be able to see any of my friends nor go to the mall with them like I did earlier. Soon, I got to know that I’ll be having online classes and that got me excited, maybe because we were about to do something new.
But within a week, I realised how tiring and frustrating they were. I missed being in school physically with my friends. Few weeks later, my screen-time increased tremendously. I had tuitions to attend after my regular school and after that, I had loads of homework to do, both of school and tuition.
Few months passed this way and, to be honest, it was getting depressing. Waking up every day, the first thing I’d hear would be the number of COVID cases either increasing or decreasing. That’s when we decided to add a new member to our family.
In August, last year, we got a dog home. It, definitely, made things much better. The atmosphere in our house became livelier. By September, it had become normal for all my family members and me to sit in front of our computers for hours and hours and do online classes and meetings.
Online classes are definitely harder. My teachers kept giving us projects and they slowly piled up because I didn’t do them on time or kept procrastinating. The whole 2020 was spent like this. Being at home for a full year, definitely wasn’t fun.
Well, it did have some plus points. Like, we spent more time with our families. I learnt a classical dance and improved further in western dance. I started editing pictures, turning them into aesthetic wallpapers, etc.
We had hoped that 2021 would be better, but in my opinion, it is worse! To add to that, I had to give offline exams after studying online for a whole year. When I went back to school, I realised that throughout this lockdown, I turned into a much quieter and reserved person. I talked to only three of my friends, when I actually had many more.
This whole situation still gives me mixed feelings. I’m relieved that I’m with my family, but I’m also sad because I can’t go out anymore. But we don’t really have a choice now, do we?
She is a 15-year-old student of class 10th of the Delhi Public School, Indirapuram.