Artist’s Statement

The title of my essay is Ten Months of Disappointment. This year has been difficult for many people. The coronavirus has changed everything, including me. This year started out for me well but then the virus and other tragedies hit me hard. Each month of this year created new challenges but, in the end, also created new opportunities. I wrote this piece after a deep reflection of this year’s experiences. I sat down in my room at my computer and thought about how each month began and ended. I reexamined photos I took with my phone, text messages I sent, and social media posts I sent and received. I reflected on the many conversations I had with my mom and dad. I thought about the conversations I had with my friends while playing games on my PlayStation. While I wrote this piece for my well-being, I hope my story will inspire others to never give up no matter the challenge.

I’m making a presentation about how two specific characters from The Vampire Diaries personally inspired my urge and passion for my future acting career. Before quarantine I was serious about wanting to direct, produce, and act, but I wasn’t so eager to explore the variety of different personalities to play and create, until I started watching The Vampire diaries. Obviously, within 8 months of being locked up inside, it’s not fun at all. To get through a time like this, me and my mom started watching The Vampire Diaries, where I was introduced to the two characters who inspired the type of characters I want to play. Klaus Mikaleson and Kai Parker, the two powerful, supernaturnatural, and feared villains. The show itself paves the way for my identity towards creating shows and movies in the supernatural genre. Basically, because of quarintine 2020, I know now exactly what I want to do with my future.

In many ways, our life is like a flower. The first stage of a flower is planting. Then it grows and develops into a beautiful flower, but with time, it withers away and dies. A flower has many stages of its life, like people. This picture is one of the stages of my life and many others had to face in this pandemic. This photograph was created in late September. The picture Reflection is taken in my bedroom.

The picture Reflection was taken in my room and took a while to shoot. To set up the picture, I first moved my desk against the wall. After setting up, the hard part was taking the picture. Even with 2 years worth of experience in photography, it was a struggle. Since I had no one to help me take the picture, I used the self-timer on the camera, which would give me 10 seconds to get in the right position. It took almost 3 to 4 hours to get the best result. To get the best quality, I decided to edit. It took a long time to do, I tried multiple times, but the exposure was always too much or too little. I stayed up late trying to edit it until I was satisfied with the result until one day it came out how I wanted it.

In many ways, I have gained and lost in this pandemic. It has not been the easiest stage of my life that I’ve had to go through. I just wanted to share that mental health is very important during this pandemic and staying positive can be hard. It’s hard to be home because it feels like you are trapped in a cage slowly becoming smaller, and not being able to be set free. It’s hard but I know one day it will all be okay because things always start and come to an end.

By the time you finish reading this, maybe a stage of your life has ended and a new one has started, like a flower. To be honest, I wouldn’t know, but I do hope you have enjoyed this. This photography project may have sounded easy but it was not. I had to use things around my house since I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere, so I had to be creative. It was hard, but I had fun creating it.

I wrote my essay about what it feels like to grow as a person in the pandemic. The prompt was to write about how it has affected my identity. This was a hard thing to write about for me because I think that as a teenager my identity is already changing a lot. I didn’t know how to differentiate what about the pandemic has changed about me. I decided I wanted to talk about that because I think that is a real feeling. I also wanted to write about how it feels like teenagers are missing out. I wrote about this because it is a scary thing to realize this is the time where you are supposed to be making memories but your not. I think we have been told that this is the time for having fun and learning about yourself for a long time but now that we are teenagers its not happening. This is something I have noticed about myself and I have heard from my friends. I think its is shaping our identity a lot so I wanted to write about it.

Have you ever just sat on your couch and thought “what am I going to do while being stuck in quarantine?” Well that’s what I thought. Not that I don’t like staying home, but I needed to find new things to do. . I know everyone thought of the same idea. Since I was bored in quarantine I decided to become interested in different hobbies like Drawing, Cooking, and Music.

My online art class inspired me to start drawing. On one assignment, we had to analyze our favorite song. My teacher said “ what ideas can you come up with just from listening to the song”. I got really creative and started to think of bright colors and since the song was about letting go I started to draw things that demonstrate that emotion. Although I started drawing in art class, I began drawing outside of class whenever I was upset or had an idea. I think that’s really important because when drawing you can take out your anger or sadness by just drawing on paper. Even if I don’t show my drawings to others I’ll just keep that idea to myself and it’s still special.

During quarantine I started to learn how to cook. My mom would teach me step by step and I even tried to cook on my own. If I needed help, my mom would be there for me and tell me if I was doing something right or wrong..We usually made Colombian or Japanese food together. I already knew some of the fastest food you could cook is rice, Beans, chicken, pasta, and fish. I think cooking is an important skill that you would need to learn in the future because parents aren’t always going to be there to help. We need to learn how to do things ourselves.

Although I have listened to music and sang before, I never thought of actually dedicating Music as a hobby. During quarantine I started to actually find my voice range and the meaning of some songs that I could probably start singing. I thought singing is the best way to let out emotions about things either when being sad or happy.

During quarantine, I developed new hobbies that influenced my life, and that helped me become who I am. I’ll be sure to carry these new interests with me throughout my life.

For the Coming of Age 2020 project I chose to submit a picture of my journal entry I wrote in 8th grade at the beginning of online learning. I chose this because I feel as though it perfectly sums up my attitude towards what was going on at the time and it also sums up some other people’s reaction toward Quarantine and COVID. I talk about not taking the situation seriously. Back when it started, I knew Covid was a threat but I, to an extent, thought that I just wouldn’t get it or it just wasn’t that big of a deal. That was until my father became sick. You never really realize the pure danger in something till it basically slaps you in the face and my project talks all about that. My project also talks about school. Since I’m in 9th grade, I had to leave the school in which I wrote this in. I’ve been at that school since 3rd grade when I transferred there. During the last few weeks before school closed was hard. We were starting our PSSA prep and got a new principal who changed things up a lot. I started to hate that school and would say I couldn’t wait to leave. When they sent out a letter that we wouldn’t be back in school in 2 weeks I was ok with that because I still wasn’t fully educated on coronavirus. It wasn’t until May 19th when the school said they would send a cap, I was upset and asked my mother why and she asked me if I new what was going on. I was still oblivious and she turned on the news. I saw thousands of cases of COVID-19 and saw the amounts of death. I was finally scared straight. I was also told I won’t be going back to school either until possibly next year, which meant highschool would start but we won’t be there to really go. That was the exact moment I finally had a realization. The next day on online class the teacher told us to write down our feelings, and I did. I wrote about my journey to finding out why this world was in a panic and why I should have taken it more seriously.

This year has been a year of ups and downs, but the things that have separated this year from previous years is climate change, a topic that is thrown around and put aside. Climate change, a change in global or regional climate patterns, has struck our world with the worst of it. To forest fires, water rising, up rise in heat, ice glaciers melting, it affects our everyday lives and that was just a few. I believe if we take steps In the right direction we can solve this crisis. You might be reading this and asking, what steps can we take? Well to answer that question there’s a vast amount of little things we can do. It starts by using energy wisely, reuse items, turn off lights when not using them, little things like that goes a long way to providing a safe environment for yourself, your community, and most importantly the world. No matter your age, you can make a difference and it starts now!

Essay - Quarantine Through Different Perspectives

Quarantine has affected every single one of us in different ways. Some changes can be positive and negative. I think that for most teenagers, quarantine has been a negative thing. It has caused us to miss out on important events in our lives. I think our teenage years are some of the most important, and interesting times of our lives. This is a time when we grow, meet new people, and make great impacts on our lives. Quarantine has made us miss a lot of things that are important to us, exciting things. Some teens might have had a good experience with quarantine. Maybe they like being isolated and with more time to themselves. I have personally not met any teens who actually like quarantine but I know there could be a lot of kids who think like this. I decided to ask some of my friends about their experience during quarantine. These are some of the questions I asked them: Do you feel like you’re missing out on important events of your life/ like your wasting time? What’s one word that best describes your quarantine experience? Has quarantine been good for you or not?

I got 8 people’s responses and they all ended up being very similar. Six of them said that they felt they were missing out or wasting their time because of quarantine. Some of the words they described their experience as were boring, lazy, unmotivated, stressful, lost, “meh”, and fun. Seven people said their experience was bad and only one person said their quarantine experience has been good. My own experience with quarantine hasn’t been pleasant at all. I feel like quarantine has made me waste valuable time. I’ve missed my 8th-grade graduation and the beginning of my freshman year. Those are two things I’m very frustrated that I’ve missed out on. I’ve looked forward to those two events for years. Maybe since 5th grade. I always expected my freshman year to be filled with excitement and joy. This is not at all what I expected it to start off as, but it won’t be like this forever. I also go to Colombia every summer to visit my family and sadly I wasn’t able to go this year. It’s already hard enough for me not being able to see them for 10 months and now it’s doubled the time. This has caused a lot of stress and frustration. Quarantine feels like being grounded for an incredibly long time. I just can’t wait until it’s over.

Author’s statement.

I wrote this essay the day before it was due. To be honest it was hours before it was due. I finished writing it at around 11:40 PM. I had an idea of what I wanted to do weeks before the project was due but I actually sat down and wrote it on the last day. This might seem like I was irresponsible with my time management (and it probably is) but I know I wasn’t the only one who did this. I know a couple of people who participated in this contest that did exactly what I did. Since quarantine started, and before, I struggle with my time management. I do a lot of my work a little while before it’s due. I also don’t think that because we wait last minute to do it, it’s gonna turn out bad. I’ve done a lot of projects that ended up looking awesome the day before they were due. I think this relates a lot to being a teen in these weird times but also it relates to being a teen in general.

2020 has been a rough year for everyone, but for some people it has been extraordinary hard, the teenagers. Teenagers already live a hard life outside of covid and covid definitely made their lives more stressful. So I decided to interview my brother, who is a teenager living in chaotic times. I asked him a series of questions regarding recent events. Although my project isn’t the best, it’s unique. It shows what a teenager thinks about in these modern times.