2020 was the worst year of my life. My experience during the pandemic has been tough but still manageable. What made 2020 so bad were all the changes that had to be made for the better of me and everyone else. The changes included how I was going to spend the summer, how the school year was going to be adjusted, and how my family was going to spend the holidays.

First of all, I had a tedious summer. It was tedious because I literally couldn’t do anything. I didn’t go anywhere nor do anything. I was at home every, single, day. And my grandmother couldn’t visit during the summer. Every summer my maternal grandmother would fly from Jamaica to the US just to spend the summer with my family and I. She’d fly over in early July and then fly back by mid September. I’d always look forward to seeing her, and because she couldn’t fly over, my summer didn’t feel the same without her.

Secondly, I sat at the grown-up table. During Thanksgiving or Christmas, my family (on my father’s) would all go over to my aunt’s house to have dinner. Everyone brings their own dish, and we all share out which dish we want to eat. After we get our food, all the adults will go to the dining room and eat at the grown-up table. As for me, my little brother, two cousins, and I, all go to the living room and eat at a different table. It was nice because we did get the TV all to ourselves, but I was the oldest and had been sitting there for a long time. I’d wonder what it’d be like to sit at the grown-up just a few times, but it wasn’t ever going to happen, except for 2020. In 2020, the pandemic resulted in my family having to stay in their homes for Thanksgiving and Christmas. In my house, I live with my mother, father, and little brother. Since it was just the four of us that meant we were all going to sit at the same table for both holidays. In the first time in fifteen years I had sat at the grown-up table, and so did my brother for the first time in nine years. Though it was different for me because I had been sitting at the living room table longer most of my life, it felt like I was being looked at as much higher than what I was, a child.

Lastly, how school was adjusted. The 2020-2021 school year is much different from my other school years. First, school wasn’t going to be five days a week, it was going to be two days a week. If a person’s last name started with the letters A-L, they would go to school on Mondays and Tuesdays. If a person’s last name started with the letters M-Z, they would go to school on Thursdays and Fridays. On Wednesdays, everyone would be online. I had found this adjustment easy to manage. Until school had shut down during the winter because of COVID contact tracing. I found this new adjustment really acceptable, but it did feel a little dense, like I was trapped in some sort of box. I still made it work though, I’d login online everyday to every class. That is until school started to open up again in spring, but not for two days a week, it was going to be four days instead. I was not ready for that. I’d been online for about two months and now I was back to being in person, for 4 weeks. When the day finally came, I was having the hardest time adjusting to this new schedule, but I’ve gotten used to it up to now. I just there are no more adjustments to this school year. 2020 has definitely changed my life significantly.