By Kelly Yang, age 17
The pandemic impacted a lot of people, not just in their physical health, but also their mental health. Back in 2019, I was the type of student to get all my assignments done right after they were assigned. I never thought that I would struggle with procrastination, something that plagued my classmates for years. During the pandemic, however, it became harder and harder to focus in class, and I became my own worst nightmare: a procrastinator. I would spend the majority of my days sleeping, logging into class just to type “present,” and leaving to go play video games for the rest of the afternoon. My attention span was even worse. I would spend the majority of my time on TikTok watching short, 30-second videos, constantly craving for that next hit of dopamine. I was my own worst enemy, and I refused to change my daily routine, holding onto the firm belief that once the pandemic ceased, my procrastination would cease to exist along with it. Unfortunately, even after school returned to in-person and I stopped heavily playing video games, I would still find myself procrastinating on everything.
No amount of outside influence could help me with my work ethic, but I found that watching other people be productive in YouTube videos helped me the most with being productive. The more videos I watched, the more motivated I felt. I wanted to live the same lives as those I had seen on screen, and seeing those people motivated and reaching their goals motivated me as well. I also found that surrounding myself with other motivated people helped too. Seeing their passion for their interests encouraged me to work harder towards my career goals. I met people who were excited to study computer science and develop machine-learning algorithms. I met people who wanted to enter the medical field and encourage other women of color to enter it with them. I met kids that were passionate about saving our environment and finding ways to reduce carbon emissions. These people wanted to change the world, and I found myself aspiring to be like them.
The issue is, all the motivators I found were outside motivators. Throughout the transition from online back to in-person classes, I felt like I was just slapping a small band-aid over a large problem. It is true that being around motivated people helps me feel motivated, but I would quickly lose that motivation and resort back to procrastinating on all of my schoolwork. Without having internal motivations, I found that I was easily swayed by what others were doing around me, and my short attention span was still steadily persisting.
Overall, the transition from online to in-person schooling has revealed a lot of issues within the system. There has been a serious lack of support for students; teachers teach like nothing has changed from 2019, expecting students to just be able to transition completely back to in-person classes within the span of a year. This mindset is simply not realistic and puts the burden on the students to figure out their work ethic and academic learning style- or risk failing. Kids who used to be great students are now finding themselves struggling in classes and struggling to be productive, with no support from schools. As a teen struggling with productivity right now, I just wish that schools and teachers were more understanding of the sudden changes to our education and how that could impact our productivity and mental health.
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