By Luci Hagen
Finding triumphs through tribulations in the past school year:
When I began this project, I found it nearly impossible to try and describe in 650 words how drastically COVID has affected every part of my life. I hope that by focusing on the unique positives these unprecedented circumstances have presented for young folks like me, rather than the obvious negatives, I can help the community understand our perspective just a little bit more.
At the beginning of quarantine and as distance learning first began, I was already struggling to keep up in school. I was at a loss for motivation to do anything, and any semblance of order in my life was out the window. The only constant in my schedule was that every night in the first few months, starting at 11 pm until around two or three am, I would practice writing on my computer. At first, I’d journal my day, or write poetic rants, but gradually I decided to concentrate my work on something bigger. I discovered an 8th-grade screenplay project on my old computer. I noticed the writing, plot, and characters were all unclear and poorly written. So I took it upon myself to reconfigure the screenplay into a short novel worth reading. Night by night I furiously typed until my fingers grew tired from keeping up with the words that flew through my mind. Eventually, when the first month passed since restarting my story, I’d managed to write around fifty pages of work, more than I’d ever been able to accomplish sequentially in my life.
I kept tweaking my story, but slowly realized I’d never be satisfied with it until I could be taught by an experienced educator on how to make my writing better. This prompted me to take an English class at the junior college over the summer, for I knew I’d have plenty of time as all my other summer plans were canceled because of the pandemic. Thankfully, I was able to excel in that class. Upon returning to online school in the fall, I found it yet again an arduous task to stay on top of my work for all except two classes, those being English and Journalism.
By this point, I knew writing would be the only thing I’d be motivated to do in school, so I took that knowledge and ran with it. I became invested in the project of our school newspaper, The Hounds Bark, and wanted our articles to reach as many people as possible. So I contacted the local newspaper, The Healdsburg Tribune, in hopes of a partnership to increase the number of readers our paper was receiving. Through this interaction, I was offered an internship at their paper. Since then I’ve been writing articles for them with my friend, Elise Thompson, one of which landed the cover of the January 14th issue. If I hadn’t had the time to take up creative writing on my own during those first few months of quarantine, I might’ve never taken my passion for English as far as I have now.
So I think what not many people have spoken about is that through this abundance of time and need for self-motivation and responsibility, students have been able to find out what they can easily get excited to do and what they cannot. For some people that is music, exercise, photography, gardening, reading, really anything that they full-heartedly enjoy. We have had so much time to self-reflect and discover our true strengths and weaknesses as people, an opportunity that hardly any other generation has been able to receive. With this newfound understanding of ourselves, we’ve been able to try and find ways to improve ourselves. And better yet, we realize what really matters to us, and have developed a greater appreciation for life’s little joys as well as things we never knew we’d have to live without.
Published in the March 2, 2021 issue of the Sonoma County Gazette, “Finding triumphs through tribulations in the past school year.”
Luci Hagen is a 10th grade student at Healdsburg High School in Healdsburg, California, where she lives with her parents, her younger siblings Lola and Cayson, her scrappy mutt named Nigel, and her orange tabby named Leia. Though she appreciates her studies and has a deep passion for writing that she hopes will lead her someplace significant, Luci also loves to create art, listen to music, act in musicals, and has currently been trying to learn guitar and how to play golf. Above all, she enjoys spending time with her family and has made it a personal goal to fill her high school years with as many bizarre and exciting experiences with her friends as possible.
