At the start of quarantine, my life was so boring. Everyday I would wake up, do homework, workout, eat a little, and go to bed. The same routine everyday and everyday and everyday. I hated it. I felt so useless in life. At some point I finally snapped and started doing new things. With all this extra time I tried doing new things I’ve never done before to see if I’d like it. 

I tried cross stitching, baking, playing animal crossing, and other activities. In the end, I gave up and was still bored at home. One day I picked up the remote to turn on my TV. I saw on my Netflix account that I still had to finish this anime called “Haikyu”. I finished it and finally I found my hobby. 

After finishing Haikyu I started watching a lot more anime. I got sucked into the void and became obsessed. In sixth grade, I used to watch anime but stopped since I didn’t have the time. Now, I’m at home 24/7 with nothing to do so I have plenty of time. These shows and the characters in them really stuck with me and are actually very important in my life. Even though on television it just looks like moving drawings, to me, these animations mean everything. Every show brings me so much happiness and overall my mood improved after watching more anime. I also found out lots of my friends watch anime as well so I started talking to them more and got closer to them. My mental health during quarantine was saved thanks to anime. In the beginning, I was just so bored and sad with my life but with these TV shows, happiness overfilled my body. My mom would always laugh at me about how I’m over obsessing over these shows and characters but I didn’t care. Honestly, this was the happiest I’ve been my entire life. A quote that stood out to me while watching Haikyu was “Farewell my paradise”. This is said when a character lost the nationals volleyball game and realized he would never play again. I really liked this quote because it reminded me of how I was going to go back to school soon and I would soon have to say goodbye to my own paradise. 

Now there’s school. Overworking, over stressing, I’m tired. Most of my teachers don’t understand that I don’t have all the time in the day to do my homework. They don’t realize that I have 4 other classes with work that I need to complete. These teachers think that since I’m at home doing online, that means I have extra hours in the day to work. Absolutely not. Honestly, online school isn’t even teaching me anything. I’m not even learning at this point. I’m just trying to submit my assignments before 12 A.M and trying my best not to fail these classes. It’s pretty ironic in my opinion. Weren’t schools the ones telling us to limit our screen time to 1 hour a day? Now we have to sit in front of our computers for 4 hours a day for school and an extra 8 hours for homework. Even on the weekends I can’t get rest. I thought that weekends were the time to relax and de-stress. Now, I spend my entire weekend working on assignments so I can keep an A in class. My teachers keep saying they understand that we’re going through a hard time, but do they? The answer is no. They tell the students that they understand that we’re going through a crisis but they don’t help us in any way. During quarantine, I would go to bed at 10 P.M and wake up at 9 P.M. Nowadays, I go to bed at 1 A.M and wake up at 7 A.M. If I’m lucky, I’m able to watch one episode of anime a day and honestly, that’s the highlight of my day. I really want to tell my teachers but I’m too scared. My eyes burn from staring at my screen all day and my vision is getting worse but I’m still working as hard as I can because I want my future to be successful. In order to achieve that future, I need to sacrifice things I did in my free time such as anime. On weekends, instead of laying on bed and watching Netflix, I need to study and pass my classes. “Farewell my paradise”. Goodbye to all the hobbies and hello to all the textbooks.