I am a quarantine-graduate and a quarantine-freshman, Batch of 2020 – and I don’t know how to feel about that. Maybe I was rushing into things. Maybe I didn’t think much through. In fact, I still don’t know if I’d made the right decision in pushing through with my enrolment. 

January 2020 was the calm before the storm. Most of my batchmates, myself included, got the message of our dreams during that time: college entrance results! Personally, I was overjoyed. I’d gotten into my dream university and passed all my other exams.

But as time went on, I couldn’t bring myself to learn or study anymore. 

I have to be honest: at first, I didn’t understand why people in my batch opted to sit out of studying this year because it was online. For lack of a better term, I silently looked down on them. I couldn’t find a logical reason as to why they’d waste a whole year, risking getting delayed, just because of this system we were all new to.

Reflecting on it now, I was too clouded with privilege to have empathy for those stuck in unstable homes, with slow to no internet connections, and many more struggles. I thought that if I could suck it up, why couldn’t others do as well? That mindset came to spite me after.

After just one semester of online classes, I’ve already lost count of the many times I’d wanted to quit. 

There’s a reason why the home and school are two separate institutions. My respect for homeschooled kids rose to greater heights after this. It’s all so exhausting; I’ve felt more stress in one week of online school than I’d felt in one month of on-site school.

If only if it was just video call discussions and answering short quizzes; if only if it was just filling up discussion boards and passing in essays, but it wasn’t. 

I had to face near-blinding screens every single day, trying to comprehend lessons I wouldn’t even have understood at first listen in face-to-face lectures. The separation of time between studying and resting was unrecognizable to me now; and with this learning setup dependent on an internet connection, something I couldn’t control, I was now reading theses at midnight while listening to lectures (if my internet connection even let me) in the morning, half-awake. 

Was fully depending on myself to study a form of growth? Was it growth when I lost almost all sanity not understanding lessons and having no one in class to talk to or ask for clarifications? Should I be proud of how high my grades are when I’ve already forgotten all of the lessons I technically “learned?” 

How can I be motivated to change the world when all I know from the world now is that it’s crumbling? Am I supposed to just keep myself strong, or “resilient,” every day, when I wake up wishing that the pandemic never happened?

I’m overwhelmed by the thought that all the expectations I had for my freshman year have slipped through my fingertips. They were all just close enough to reach, yet I never truly got to feel them. It pains me to think that every waking moment after my enrolment, hundreds of thousands of pesos are being wasted on my “potential,” which I can’t even see in myself anymore. 

Don’t get me wrong, I want to believe that things will get better. I am just presently living in this distraught state, thinking of how good it would have been if had I stepped back instead of draining myself days on end.

Going back to my first statements. Maybe I was rushing into things. Maybe I didn’t think much through. Maybe I thought too little of online learning. Maybe I didn’t think the lockdown would last this long. Maybe I was too scared to forego the chance of going to my dream school. Maybe I didn’t expect for all of this to become a nightmare. 

I wanted to end this essay with a resolution, as all traditional essays end with, but I’m still lost. 

Right now, some of my closest college friends are taking their Leaves of Absence for the second semester. I even know of some who have chosen to drop out. Now, all I’m hoping is that other students understand there is no need to rush anything. We can all take gaps, breaks, and rests. All of this isn’t a race, especially not now.

With that, while looking at my still-struggling-self, I just can’t seem to get my mind off the idea that I should’ve taken a gap year. – Rappler.com

Maria Sophia Andrea E. Rosello, 19, is currently a freshman at the Ateneo de Manila University.