Project United: How Teens Coped with 2020 Around The World
Geoffrey Zhang and Members of the IHS Voice Staff
2020 was a tough year for everyone, but young people like us have felt the worst of its effects. On the precipice of adulthood, we were suddenly thrown into the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, forced into lockdowns, and stripped of the social interactions that we thrive on. That’s on top of all the usual stresses we face in our teen years: relationships, school, grades, college applications, and learning to adult in general. But like everyone else, we coped, and are still coping. Project United aims to be a snapshot into how we teens have coped, how universal yet different our experiences have been wherever we live in the world, and how we will get through this next year together.
Over the past three months, the IHS Voice staff interviewed global students on how 2020 went in countries around the world. Click below to read some of the interviews!
Irvington High School – Ethan Chen
Initially, I was quite happy, not having thought COVID would last this long. I actually got my license in June. I immediately started taking over all the errands because I used to just travel around like a few blocks. I was delivering groceries not only for my family, but also for all my relatives that lived in Fremont since one trip was very convenient for me. And I've also driven to wish two frie...
Alaska, USA – Taylor Carey
I am Taylor Carey, and I live in Wasilla, Alaska, but my high school, Colony High School is in Palmer, Alaska. My first thoughts about quarantine? I hated it. We didn't really know what to do in the beginning, because after spring break, which was in April, we started school up again. And it was all online. The teachers didn't have a curriculum, they were kind of just there. The Zoom meetings were ...
Australia – Adele Dang
My name is Adele Dang, I am currently in Year 10 going on to 11 next year. I go to Meriden which is a private Anglican High School in Strathfield, Sydney. We've been at school since term two week three, so since May. We shut down March as well but we didn’t shut down for long. We just stayed at home for the last week of school. And then we had a three week holiday. Then we stayed home again for t...
Austria – Melina
I was really thrilled at first when we were told that school would be at home and happy to stay at home because we didn’t have to take exams online and only had homework to complete. Everything became much easier online because I had more time at home to catch up on homework and focus on studying. I was also happy because I could spend more time with my family and with myself. The online classes were...
Canada – Oliver McDonnell
My name is Oliver McDonnell and my school is in Edmonton, Alberta. The school is J.H. Picard. Depending on the province, some schools shut back down again, but pretty much everyone's back to in-person learning. For us, we had one case at the beginning of the year, and I think we recently had a second one. But that's about it. My first thought when we went into distance learning was this is gonna be gr...
China – Kent Kong
When COVID began, frankly, I was happy that I didn't need to go to school in person and could stay at home for a long time. But when I saw that the virus began to spread around the world that, I became scared of what might happen around the world. In China, we had to follow very strict rules during lockdown. For example, in February, when the pandemic was very widespread in China, each family ...
Hawaii, USA – Christina Holt
We were already on spring break when COVID first hit, and then [the school] basically told us that we had another week of no school. And then they basically just kept saying that throughout the rest of the year. At first, I didn't really think much of it at first because I didn't have much education on COVID. I kind of just thought it was a small thing that might be here until summer, and then it wou...
Illinois, USA – Joey Cumpian
My name is Joey Cumpian, and I am a senior at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School in Chicago, Illinois. I'm involved in a lot of different clubs in my school. I'm the president of my school’s Business Professionals of America, I'm on the mock trial team, and I'm involved with Model United Nations and the National Honors Society. Some things that I really enjoy doing are singing, meeting new people, and...
India – Disha Chhaya
This year has definitely been quite strange. I thought that the quarantining and lockdowns would only last for a month or two, just as a precaution so as to not be infected by the disease. But I think none of us would have ever imagined it lasting for almost a year as 2020 is coming to an end. It was actually a pretty big shock to me that the pandemic lasted for such a long time. One of my uncl...
Iran – Sharzad Adl
When the lockdown first started in March, I didn’t think it would last as long as it has but I was devastated because we had a lot of fun activities going on at school and we knew that most of them would get canceled. Being unable to see my friends and family also really bothered me. Before COVID, all of my family would gather at my grandparent’s house every Friday to eat lunch together but we c...
Pakistan – Ayza Nazir
When it was just announced that we were going to have a lockdown, I was at first really nonchalant about it. I thought it would be over by the next two months or something. I didn't really mind being at home - I was actually kind of happy because that meant I got out of giving my exams. I don't usually go outside that much - I prefer to stay inside. So when COVID happened, I wasn't exactly you kn...
Singapore – Mikayla Pang Zi Rui
My name is Mikayla and I'm from Bukit Panjang in Singapore. We went into lockdown around March, in a process we called a circuit breaker. There are three phases. The first one was when everyone is basically in lockdown. And so everybody had stayed at home and all the stores closed. At one point, we had hundreds of cases, and our population is really small. So coronavirus was spreading really r...
Philippines – Mary Elisha Rodriguez
Online learning has a different vibe from face to face classes. I feel like there are a lot of factors that tempt me to not listen to online classes, but thankfully I don’t fall for those temptations. I definitely think I would do better in person learning. There are just many more opportunities when we learn face to face. In my school, whenever we would have our midterms or finals when most of ...
Texas, USA – Ananya Anand
I thought that COVID would end in two weeks because originally, we went for spring break when we first heard about it. And then they told us that we would be staying home for another week, so I honestly didn't expect it to go this long. I was actually happy at first that we didn't have school in person, but it got annoying after a little bit. I was astonished when they said we weren't going to com...
Turkey – Doğa Evgür
When quarantine first started, I wasn’t aware of how serious the disease was. I did not really care, to be honest. So, I thought that quarantine wouldn’t last for very long. Because of this, the uncertainty of the duration of quarantine had not really scared me honestly. I thought it would end in one month or a very short duration of time. Later on, I realized that the situation was going to ...
Ukraine – Srishti Gummaraju
In March, similar to everyone else, we were quarantined for the rest of the year up until after summer vacation. And now this year, we're doing a hybrid pool. We only go to school every other day, and the whole high school is divided into two groups, Cohort A and Cohort B. But the coronavirus cases haven't decreased at all in Ukraine because people just don't really care so much. A lot of people t...
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