By Logan Smout
SCS Student Reporter

ALMOST as abundant as non-stop health-related warnings and updates, people’s daily #CovidLife updates are flooding the media, especially online. Many tend to be from celebrities, politicians, and other privileged personalities who aren’t likely as affected as most of the rest of us by you-know-what.
So, how IS life these days for ordinary youth and teens like me? Aside from online learning – which I reported on last time – what about the more “overall experience” for the youth population these days?
The only word I can use to describe my quarantine life is “relaxed.” My only responsibilities are optional eLearning and working my job at a local fast-food restaurant. If you’re wondering about this “optional eLearning,” the fact is, once we were told that our course marks as of March 13th could not go down, many students (like my friend with his 94% grade) figured “why bother?” and bailed on school early this year.
As for me, I wanted to improve my grades, so I’ve been happy to use this risk-free opportunity to my advantage. My friends thought I was insane when I told them I was still setting my alarm for 6:15 a.m., but to tell you the truth, I like having a schedule. I wake up, have breakfast, work on my online courses for two or three hours, and then the rest of the day and night is mine.
But from what I’m hearing from my friends, there IS a lot of sleeping in going on! I get it: students don’t really need to get up early, quickly get ready for school, pack a lunch, organize notes and binders, catch a bus or deal with the jumbled vortex that our lockers usually are. Most mornings teens can just “chill” and stay in bed and I don’t think that’s the end of the world if it works for them.
What else have I been doing to keep myself busy, you ask?
To get exercise, I have taken up mountain biking, which has been great because there are lots of trails near my house. I’ve also been improving my parkour game, working on (among other feats) perfecting a running front-flip over a garbage can on my lawn.
No, I haven’t been baking bread, but I did make a tasty fettuccine alfredo with chicken! And while the provincial go-kart racing series I compete in is still on hold, I’ll be more than ready for it this summer because I’ve had time to get my quality BirelArt kart fully serviced and running smoothly.
As far as being with my friends, I don’t notice much of a difference. Social media and the internet were how many or most of today’s teens communicated and connected for years now anyway, plus many of us were videogaming online with friends long before Covid-19 came.
But I know my younger cousins are quite frustrated by this isolation, since they don’t live online as much as most teenagers do. I understand that seeing their friends across the street but not being allowed to play with them is weird and upsetting.
Really, I guess we’re all finding out that getting through this #CovidLife all depends on what kind of a person you are and how well you can handle social isolation for long periods of time. I’m fine with it, for the most part, and have found other ways to stay connected to people and stay healthy, which is important.
Some teens may be taking this situation better than others, but the general response from people I know has been that it has created a very low-key, more mellow lifestyle. I hope people make the best of it and get creative and try new things.
To be honest, that’s a motto you can use for almost any other hardship in life. After all, if it helps get us through a pandemic, it should be able to help us all the time.