The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives. We hope you can use their post to start a conversation with your adolescent.
Everyone has faced tough, personal decisions since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes schools and universities, like the small, private university I attend. Many schools, like mine, are under financial strain, and have decided to risk reopening so that they don’t have to close their doors for good.
Before I read my school’s official fall plan, I was constantly flip-flopping back and forth about whether I should choose to return to school or stay home. I tend to take a long time making decisions, because I struggle with perfectionism and get scared that not making the “right” decision the first time will lead to disaster. This in turn can lead me to use others as a crutch, relying more heavily on advice from family and friends than on my own instincts. However, I knew that this decision was an extremely important one, so I resisted the temptation to seek advice from my friends, and just asked my parents what they thought.
This way, I could concentrate on how I really felt about the idea of going back to school during this pandemic. I used a pros and cons list to outline some of the logistical parts of the decision, but I knew my gut was telling me to stay home. Because I have mild asthma, I know that I might be at-risk of experiencing a worse reaction to COVID-19 than others my age. While making my decision, I thought about how I would feel if I were to go back to school, and I came up with one word: scared. Although I can’t predict the future, I can guess that going back to school would easily trigger my (or anyone’s) anxiety. With my asthma, that scared feeling would likely be constant and not well-managed, since I would be constantly putting myself in a scary situation just by being at school, where I’d be around more people than I am at home. With these factors in mind, the right choice became clear to me, and I decided to stay home and take classes online this semester.
While I will miss my friends, I know that this decision is the best one for my mental (and physical) health. Not having to worry like I would at school that everything I do could lead me to contract the coronavirus will allow me to focus on my schoolwork and maintaining connections with friends, even from a distance. I usually worry that others will question my decisions, but telling some of my friends and neighbors about my decision turned out to be a positive experience. Many of them have expressed their support, and this reinforced my decision, because I know that I have a support network around me that will help check in on me as we all get through this challenging time.
Have you had to make any tough decisions as a result of the pandemic? What are your plans for school if your child is attending? What has your child said about school? Have you had a conversation with them about school this year?