Diary Entries

Dear COVID 19, You have taken so much away from me. Like taking my friends away from me, and my life. Football. I am so bored now, I can't even go outside anymore. The most I can do is go outside in my backyard and play basketball, football/soccer, and my dog. You are the worst thing that has happened in my life but you have made me spend time with my family.

My name is Tiffany, I am 13 years old. I live in Sydney, Riverwood. Coronavirus or as many know as Covid19 has changed my lifestyle, time seems to pass quicker. Quarantine has been a time were i can reflect on myself, although it has made me more stressed and more unorganised. I’ve become more distant to most of my friends such as not talking or even texting them, decisions I would’ve had made before have changed. Rather than spending more time with my family, it seems like there’s less time, i'm always at the desk doing my work or playing games. Recently it’s been cold and getting up in the mornings have already been harder than ever. The feeling of not wanting to get out of your comfort area. Because of isolation, I haven’t gone out much, however I don’t dislike it. I used to really enjoy going to school and playing with my friends but after the holidays I like staying at home watching videos or just hanging out with my dog. I’ve found that it’s refreshing to listen to music in a dark room, it makes everything feel more calm. Online School has been tricky with all my technology always acting up, it’s harder to ask the teacher questions and for me to explain my question into a sentence without showing. My email became clogged up with Google Classroom and I wasn’t sure which subject was which. It seems that my dog is enjoying Covid19 more than everyone.

COVID-19 has allowed me to reflect on myself and my family- specifically to spend more time with them as due to schoolwork and assignments, I cannot spend much time with them. However, through quarantine and social isolation, I have been able to spend more time with them. However, there were the downsides where we were encouraged to stay indoors to allow the spread of COVID-19 to slow. Staying home wasn't a big deal for me since I was already quite the homebody, however, even for me as a homebody was hard to cope without socialising with my friends. During the school holidays, I'd usually go out places with my friends to catch up, however, this holidays I couldn't due to the strict measures put into place. With quarantine and isolation having both its negative and positives points, as a 14 y/o, I knew this experience would never come again, so I tried to make the best of it during this time.

Dear people of the future, My name is Niki and I am a twelve year old living through the COVID-19 pandemic. I was at school when I found out about the outbreak of the virus and I didn't think much of it. Weeks after, restrictions were put in at our school. No touching anything if not needed, no touching friends, and no touching your face. It was a very surreal experience. A week after that, I was at home, working in my pyjamas while doing my schoolwork posted on my computer. It sounds amazing doesn't it? Well that's what i thought for the first week in complete isolation. You can simply walk to the fridge in the middle of a science or history lesson and you have no one to motivate you to work. But that is what I found challenging. When there's no rules and no teachers to tell you to keep working, I wasn't motivated enough to keep working and I missed a lot of work and that made me stressed and confused. But finally, I am back at school. There are strict restrictions, even stricter than before isolation, but at least I get to see my friends rather than seeing them on a screen. Sure, it was fun drinking tea while working or drawing chalk on the driveway, but coming to school on a crisp May morning has never felt so good. From Niki

Of course, Covid 19 has been challenging for everybody. Although there are many negatives in this situation, many positives have come out of it as well. One of my favourite parts of this quarantine was being able to see how resilient the entire world was in this crazy situation. We have all found so many ways to keep ourselves entertained whilst being stuck inside our home and that was so exciting to see for example the teddy bear hunts in my suburb were so much fun. Overall I feel like this has been a crazy but very interesting time for all people, I have learnt a lot, spent quality time with my family, got lots of exercise and just had a lot of fun.

I can sleep at night, don't know about you but. I never thought I would be in such a bumpy time, the world is confused, very confused. It is a new way and if you're reading this in the future(what happened?). no one in my family has "it" but I have heard stories of cruise ships and flights gone wrong, mum and dad say we are lucky they didn't lose their jobs, but I don't know. I just returned to school we had like 2 MONTHS off and yes, it was the best. The news plays things up (ha I did a speech on that in primary). I don't know what's next, well, welcome to the unknown! everyone even the experts don't know any more. people say I am lucky as I got to have four days on highschool each week. I am begging so meta (help me isolation is killing me! metaphorically) I can't wait till we get to zero cases, then I can be free yay! look on the bright side we got new words!? eg iso, 'rona and self-isolation. so... Well whatever next I will be optimistic nothing I can face, right?

When I first heard about Covid-19, it didn't sound like it was going to affect me much, but as it started to spread and come to Australia I realized that it was serious. When lock down came I was stuck inside, I wasn't allowed to go outside, or even go get groceries. when it came to doing school virtually, it proved to be more of a challenge than I expected, I wasn't very good with organizing everything but I came to get used to it. Covid-19 lock down was hard because you quickly run out of things to do because you can't go anywhere and for some reason people are buying all the toilet paper and they are stocking up on everything, so when you would go to the shops there wouldn't be many essentials left, but it has gotten better with added restrictions so they could reduce the spread of the virus. During lock down it was hard but worth it to reduce the spread of Covid-19.

My experience in Covid-19 was fun and annoying at the same time. I had to do homeschooling which was fun. I liked it at home because i could relax and I finally didn't have anything to do because i am always on weekend holidays. I am the middle brother of three boys so i always had someone to talk to. I was on top of my work and i never handed anything in late. I was going on bike rides nearly every weekend with my friends and my family. I personally loved it because I was starting to want a break from friends and just spend a week without seeing someone but I got more than i asked for. I have had the marvel movie series since Christmas and i really wanted to watch them in order with my Dad and we've nearly finished so thats great. When it started i didn't understand what was happening but after listening to Gladys Berejiklian every morning it made think differently about whats happening and how lucky i am not to have the coronavirus. My Pops were high risk and we have to be super careful around them. Overall it was fun, crazy and annoying.

There are many thoughts going in my head at the moment. Good and Bad. 2020 is a rollercoaster ride with many ups and downs. This year we have had a new disease named COVID-19 this started in China and has since spread all throughout the world so therefore it was named a Global Pandemic. This situation has put many activities on hold. Like traveling, Sport and even school got stopped for me!!! But on the 11th May 2020, Marist Catholic College Penshurst yr 7 students went back to school 4 days a week and yr 8-11 once a week. A thing that made me understand is how not to take things for granted and to appreciate what we have cause one day it could be all gone just like now. If this ever happens again there are many things you can do. Eg. Paint, learn something new.

When this pandemic started restrictions were put in. One of the restrictions was being 1.5 metres away from everyone. It got to the point where school was cancelled. Learning at home was not that bad. I personally did not like learning at home, but it was more flexible being able to do each of our subjects at different times of the day. Whenever I would turn on the TV The News would be filled with problems with jobs and people on the doll, There was also news about protests in other countries and cruise ships being infected. The most affected countries were Italy, China and USA. people were worried about immigrant or tourists coming into their country. On the 11th of May I returned back to school Thursdays being the only day at home. There were some slight differences in the way we learn like having to split up tables and not being able to do sports. We still got to do some sports like running but we couldn't go to the park.