Today is May 3, 2020, and as a senior, I’m in a panic. School is over in five days, and I still have so much school work to do. Right now I’m stuck in Phoenix, Arizona at my godmother’s house due to the pandemic. Why? March 20, 2020, was the first day of spring break, and I flew to AZ for a spring break trip. We initially were going to drive from Arizona to Los Angeles, California to celebrate my senior year. What actually happened was that we ended up having to cancel the trip and my flight back home to St. Louis. Pretty sucky right? It’s been a month and a half in Arizona now and I’m just stuck in the same cycle; Wake up, eat, watch movies, watch RuPaul’s Drag Race, do homework at 4 am, sleep.

Here’s a little thing you need to know about me. I have an anxiety disorder. This means that I’m basically a severe overthinker and a professional worrier. A lot of people with anxiety or depression including me suffer from something called executive dysfunction. People with executive dysfunction struggle with planning, problem-solving, organization, and time management. I’ve been trying to deal with this problem during the month and a half that we’ve been out of school, but it has been extremely hard. There are even times where I’ll sit in front of my laptop staring at an assignment yet still being unable to do the task. Every day has been an emotional struggle that I’ve been trying to deal with and I’m just mentally exhausted.

During the first week of the pandemic, I was laid off by my job. That was the first straw. The second straw was a few relationship problems, and the third straw was just not being able to come home. The fourth straw was losing senior year. After that everything just continued to go downhill from there, so this whole thing has just made me appreciate what I already have. Unfortunately, with all of this going on, my depression and insecurity have risen.

It’s also hard to see all of my friends going through depression and slowly shut down as time passes. All motivation has been lost in this pandemic and I just think most of us are ready to graduate. The sucky thing about this is that we’re not even getting a graduation ceremony like most seniors, so with all of this emotional baggage it’s hard to be motivated to do school work. This whole is just an unhealthy cycle.

Personally I’ve been emailing teachers back to back hoping for understanding, but this is just hard for everyone so I don’t expect much. If I’m being honest, I’ve cried every day about school stress on top of other things, and at this point, I’m getting to the point where I’m fine with graduating with bad grades as long as a graduate…and that’s coming from an honors student! I don’t think people are taking this as seriously as they should at all. I’m not learning by reading a book and taking notes or answering questions. Teachers all around the world are getting paid to give out busy work and I don’t think that students deserve that at all. I have around 25 assignments to turn in on Friday or before. That’s only five days or less! 19 of those assignments is just busywork that isn’t teaching me to do anything new, but if I want to graduate with good grades, I have to do the assignments right? I think it’s truly unfair to the circumstances that we’re given right now.