The daily life of a quarantined student is not as great as you’d expect

If you were a fly on the wall of the Shoshani household in recent weeks, you may have heard a quote like this coming from my parents:

“Lihi, you do nothing around the house, it's completely unacceptable.”

Now I disagree since watching television all day is a pretty productive day for me, and everyone’s working, so what could I even help with? I’m also swamped with homework for most of the day while my 12-year-old brother plays video games, but my parents see no fault in that. 

Let's just say that the COVID-19 quarantine hasn't been a walk in the park — literally and figuratively.  

And the amount of schoolwork I get is ridiculous: I start at around 9 or 10 a.m. with English and History, which usually takes the longest as I transcribe notes and read dozens of agonizing short stories, then move onto Chemistry, which surprisingly, has been pretty easy. At the earliest, I finish at 2 p.m. I work nonstop on all my homework the day it’s assigned because the dates to turn assignments in can be very confusing and I prefer finishing as early as possible.

After “school” ends, I take a much deserved two-hour break from schoolwork by watching TikToks, reading or binging Netflix — I’ve gotten through three seasons of “Criminal Minds” and I fangirl over Spencer Reid. Then, I move on to doing different workouts or painting my nails and watching even more movies. 

Although this is relaxing at first, these pastimes have become boring. I think about taking up new hobbies like painting or sewing, but my mom seems discouraged by my sewing efforts and painting looks too difficult.

I’m left with a lot of free time, so my screen time has increased dramatically. I decided a while ago to stop kidding myself into thinking I’d only need 15 more minutes when I’d reach my screen time limit, and I completely removed that restriction. 

Every night, I try to Facetime or Snapchat my friends. We either talk about nothing or watch Netflix together late into the night, which has completely messed up my sleep schedule, leaving me to sleep at 1:30 a.m. and wake up super early since my body won’t let me sleep in. I don’t even want to see how much my Snap score has increased over quarantine. 

I miss going out and wearing real outfits instead of the same pajamas every day, but it seems quarantine isn’t ending any time soon. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to overuse my phone until I’m able to go out and have a life again.