K S LO ENGLISH

The story happened two years ago when I first started my secondary school. It was a great change for me. I had a new environment to adapt to and some new classmates to meet. But those were not the toughest parts of the new secondary school days. In fact, the 6 core subjects (there were only 4 in primary school!) was the toughest part to deal with.

I can still recall the Christmas holiday then. To cope with the 6 new and hard subjects, I stayed at home all day long during the holiday. I didn’t go out and play. I didn’t play video games. I didn’t hang out with friends. I just stayed at home and worked hard in my studies.

In the past years, I used to go out and play every Christmas. There were only 4 easy subjects in primary school. It’s a piece of cake for me. I could handle them without being hardworking. 

However, secondary school life was another story. I had to pay so much attention to jot down notes and understand the meanings of the textbooks. I had got no time to go out and play! Worse still, my mom stopped helping me with my studies since Form 1. I was forced to be hardworking and independent. 

While taking a break from the exhausting work, I took out my phone and listened to some music, just to temporarily wind down from the exhausting revision. I looked at Instagram and came across some new posts from my friends. They were hanging out with each other, traveling around and playing. I felt I was so weird. With such hard and brain-consuming work to do, how could they have time to go out and play?

‘Am I that stupid? It seems that all my friends have finished their work while I’m still struggling with mine!’ This was the first time I felt different. I felt that I was stupid that I needed to spend so much time studying.

Here is not the end of the story.

Weeks later, our academic report came out. My ranking was the 6th! I felt different again!

 

[Editor’s Note] This article of Kelly Lin was published on Young Post (South China Morning Post) on 4/4/2022.

  After two years of suffering from the Covid-19 pandemic, my attitude towards school life has changed a lot.

  In the past, I was a lazy student, and school life felt so tedious – it was just about sitting on a chair and writing on sheets of paper until the end of the day. Before the pandemic,  I wished the bell would ring as soon as possible so I could escape from the torture of the classroom. 

  When my classmates walked by, I did not greet them. At the time, I thought it was silly to greet them because I would see them every day. It was quite embarrassing when students looked at each other with fake smiles.

  Besides, the lunch at school was inedible because all the food from the canteen was tasteless.

  But everything changed after the outbreak of Covid-19. Schools in Hong Kong were suspended, and we were forced to stay at home. At first, I was over the moon because I did not have to study and I could do anything I wanted. I slept until noon and ate junk food for lunch. I threw away all of my textbooks and played computer games for a whole day with my classmates. I thought that was the best way to enjoy my life.

 After a while, I was not as delighted as I was before. When I read the newspapers, I noticed that many people around the world were dying because of the pandemic, including other students who lost the opportunity to study forever.

  I started to worry that I would be next, and fear tormented me. I tried to escape reality by playing video games, drawing pictures and eating food.

  Although these had been my favourite activities, I no longer find them interesting. No matter how delicious the food was, it could not whet my appetite. I deleted all of my games and started thinking, ‘Do I really like this kind of life?’

  After staying at home and looking at the walls of my room for another month, I felt desperate and depressed. I could not understand why nothing interested me anymore.

  I tried to relieve my stress by chatting with friends through social media, but my friends were just as anxious as I was. Everyone felt hopeless because the pandemic seemed endless. When I asked what they would want to do after the pandemic, every answer was the same: to enjoy going back to school.

  Last year, after the city’s Education Bureau announced schools could reopen, I remember waking up early in the morning and rushing to school on the first day. When I first stepped into the classroom, it didn’t feel real. 

  During my first English lesson, I did not fall asleep like I usually did. I felt energetic rather than sleepy. At the canteen, the quality of food did not change, but I had missed the tasteless food so much. When I chatted with my classmates, I cherished every second. Every moment felt like the last time for us to connect. Although we were all wearing masks, we could still see the smiles on each others’ faces.

  That was the first time I felt a huge change in my attitude as a student. This year, I look forward to returning to school again.