I didn’t even know what the ‘holiday’ even was about, at first. We’d talked a lot, in class, about whether we would be getting a break for flu season, as half our class was missing, and that’s what I thought the break that was supposed to be two weeks long was about. We got some homework from our teachers, a few new things to.learn, and that was it. We started with online lessons about a month later, I think, and it was only then that I noticed that this break seemed to be etting much longer than two weeks. I’m not the best with time,and this quarantine has made it even worse, so that combined with the eternity that was March has left me very confused about when it was that online lessons started, and when I noticed that this supposed holiday only seemed to last longer.
And online school was absolute hell. In a very interesting metaphor (comparison?idk) I came up with in online class, ironically, was that my mind feels like a beach ball, and focusing feels like trying to push it underwater. In class, you actually have to stay focused. On zoon university, you just have to turn on your phone. Another problem is the seeming lack of consequences for anything: I keep putting off assignments, forgeting homework, secure in my remaining knowlege like a too-rich king ignoring the messages of loss from the wars and wasting the last of their money to spend their final days in wasteful opulence, in an endless chase for the past.
Once, I had to complete around thirty, I think, pages of math homework in one night, homework that should have been spread out over weeks, that I instead ignored, procrastinated, until the very last moment.
I am so bored.
So bored, and with so many things to do: tests and oral exams and projects and papers I completely forgot about and had to bullshit at midnight for tomorrow, without internet, only my stupid, forgetful self.
I got maximum grades on that one, though, so no need to worry.
I don’t know how to feel when I hear the news that say the curfew will end, lockdown soon sfter, probably, coupled with the reports of twenty new cases today. On one hand, it’s good that we’re taking steps toward getting better, but on the other, a part of me can’t help but think of this as a trap. Like we should wait for it to fully die down, end completely, before we get careless. I’m lucky I live where I do; I’ve seen what’s going on in Britain and the US.
I want to scream at my parents, sometimes.
I went to the store one day and coughed so hard the day after, and I was so afraid I had the virus, that I would pass it to my family, to my baby sister, and the day after that, when we visited family for Eid, I kept thinking: am I going to give my sickness to these people too?
I am so tired, so infinitely bored, but I will stay. I will keep my boredom to the confines of my house. All I can do now is pray that I won’t have to do it for much longer.
Dr Kristopher Lovell 