Hi, my name is Layla B. I am currently 16 years old and preparing to go into the 11th grade. I was born and raised in New Jersey but my father is from Jamaica and my mother is from Guyana. My favorite tv show is a k-drama called An Angel’s Last Mission: Love. It’s really good and I highly recommend watching this with tissues just in case. I really want to go to Japan since I am already learning Japanese. I was supposed to go this year and attend the 2020 Tokyo Olympics but those plans got canceled due to the Coronavirus. Though it’s not taught in our school, my favorite thing to study is Japanese. I find the language very interesting and beautiful, though at times it can be quite difficult to pick up on. I am passionate about language learning and things I don’t know. When it comes to extracurricular or sports, I just picked up fencing this past year and became an events manager for the step team, both of which I enjoy being part of. I am also learning Japanese outside of school which I briefly mentioned before. To be honest, when it comes to the impact quarantine has had on me I would say that it’s not much since I tend to be more of an indoors person and thoroughly enjoy my alone time. Quarantine has provided me with so much free time which I used to study languages and get rid of the anxiety that I had suffered from when we did have to attend school. Though there were times where I was really bored in the house and tired of being cooped up I don’t think that it was all that bad. Nowadays I spend my time relaxing, though I still have summer work to finish up and prepare for the SAT. I do miss my friends and being able to freely hang out with them without having to worry about masks and whether it’s too crowded in town to hang out. Quarantine being the norm is kind of scary to think about but I know that even when quarantine is finally lifted things will never go back to “normal”. To be honest it doesn’t really feel like summer to me and it might be because I still have assignments to do or the fact that I was already cooped up at home all the time. To me, this summer just feels like any ordinary day. Days and weeks slowly begin to merge together so much that I sometimes can’t remember the date.
My school dealt with quarantine much better than what I expected but that doesn’t mean I enjoyed it. From what I heard from my sister, who just recently graduated elementary school and would always complain about how she got too much work, which she did, our school was very organized about assignments and the check-in schedule. None of my teachers forced us to attend Zooms except for my mandarin teacher, who used it to tell us what we needed to do for the week and for oral tests/quizzes, and my physics teacher, who enforced this towards the end of the year. My extracurricular, a Japanese learning program, would hold Zoom meetings in place of when we would usually start classes. For the Step team, we used Band and Zoom to stay in contact with one another and keep updated.
Though quarantine is still a big thing that everyone is going through, there are also the events of police brutality and the black lives matter protests that are still ongoing to this day. As a young woman of color, it scares me to know that my people are being targeted, not for actual crimes but for the color of their skin. Just the other day I witnessed my 9-year-old cousin break down and ask, “Why are they targeting us?”. First of all, this should not even HAVE to be what a 9-year-old thinks about. A child of that age should be worried about hanging out with her friends and what’s for dinner. Even my sister who is currently 11 years old is mentally affected by the awful things that have happened to our people. My own mother doesn’t even want me going on walks alone anymore because she is afraid that when I step out of the doors something may happen to me and I might never return home. I have been to 2 protests so far and am amazed and inspired by the number of kids my age taking action and letting their voices be heard. I have signed dozens of petitions regarding BLM but still feel like it’s not enough. BLM is not the only thing going on, there is also blatant racism towards other minorities and also the famine taking place in Yemen.
Anyway, I know the last part of my blog wasn’t part of life in quarantine but I felt like it had to be said. I hope that we can all make it through these tough times with the coronavirus and quarantine going on in the background and the fight for equality in the foreground. Stay safe and please be mindful.