Week #4 + Finished Article

This morning, I finally finished my last edits to my article, which was very satisfying. Here's a picture of the draft I was working on earlier this week, pre-edits, with lots of comments in blue from Suzanne. 

I found the editing process this week marginally less painful than the writing/generating content process last week, but I chalk that up to the fact that it’s a lot easier to work with something that already exists than something that doesn’t. 

My initial goals focused on learning more about journalism, and I think I have successfully accomplished this. I’ve learned about the interview process, research, brainstorming, structure, the style of writing, and what it’s like to work with an editor. I’ve learned that shorter quotes and paragraphs make news articles more readable, and how to determine where to add comments and research. I’ve also learned that I have a hard time focusing on writing when I’m not engaged by creating a story or argument (at least from the confines of my house). 

These are valuable things to know as I consider pursuing journalism outside of this project. I’d recommend this project to other students also interested in journalism, as it gave me a good perspective on what the job might actually look like—what aspects of it I would be challenged by (the style of writing, sitting for long stretches, emails), and what aspects I would enjoy (research, interviews, brainstorming.)

Finally, here’s my completed article: 

Coming of Age in Crisis: Teenagers and the Covid-19 Pandemic

There’s something so magical about a coming-of-age moment. Maybe it’s getting your driver’s license and

taking yourself to school, or maybe it’s prom night and your first kiss, or loading suitcases into the family

Subaru to be driven to your college dorm, and leaving your stuffed animals behind on the polka-dot duvet

of your childhood bedroom. However, for teenagers in 2020, the whimsy and freedom of adolescence

ended much more abruptly. Our coming-of-age moment was a global pandemic.  

 

And it’s not just the pandemic. Teenagers are living through a national reckoning on race and economic

unrest.

 

It’s an unprecedented moment in history, which makes it difficult to predict how this collision of events is affecting young people. But there are lessons to be learned from other crises, such as war, natural disasters, and economic hardships about how teenagers handle stressful moments of history. Broadly speaking, instability during this formative period of life can lead to high levels of stress and mental health problems that persist into adulthood. 

 

For most American teenagers, schools, extracurriculars, and social lives came to a standstill in mid-March2020. People following social distancing guidelines remained indoors while Covid-19 spread, eventually

reaching more than 33 million cases and nearly 600,000 deaths in the US alone.

 

While teenagers as a group were less at risk for serious illness or complications from the coronavirus, they

were uniquely affected by the lockdown and isolation. A national pollconducted by C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital found that 73% of parents thought that the pandemic had

a negative impact on their children’s ability to socialize with friends, and 46% said that they had

observed worsening mental health in their children. A studyby FAIR Health found that the numbers of anxiety, depression, and adjustment disorders amongst

13-18-year-olds had skyrocketed in March, April, and May of last year, and remain 25% more common

now than before the pandemic. 

 

“Unpredictability, for teenagers, has become extremely challenging emotionally,” said Dan Petrocelli,

a school counselor at Catlin Gabel School. “If we don't have any sense of control, that's when our emotions

really, really start to ramp up.”  He also notes loneliness and lack of connection as a key component in the

surge of pandemic-related teen mental health problems; “Loneliness was more widespread than I've ever

seen it.”

 

Suffering mental health is also taking a toll on schoolwork. An EdWeek Research Center surveyof teachers found that 74% reported increased student procrastination, 65% reported more incomplete

work, 56% had less student participation in class, and 48% saw increased tardiness or absenteeism.

 

“People just felt like online school, like, it's not even worth it...and so depression and [lack of] motivation

feed off of each other,” Petrocelli said.

 

Finally, despite life returning to a tentative sense of normalcy with schools and businesses reopening for

in-person service, the aforementioned effects of the pandemic on school and mental health continue to

impact the way teens think about themselves and their futures. While we can see effects broadly, not every

young person has been impacted in the same way. In order to get a more in-depth and individual picture of

the implications of the pandemic on teenager worldview and identity, I spoke to three Portland teens. Here

are their experiences over the past year, in their own words. 

 

Catie Macauley: “I was very radicalized by the events.” 

 

“I think the pandemic really forced me, like a lot of other people, to start spending more time with myself

and, getting to know myself better,” shared Catie Macauley, a graduating senior at Catlin Gabel School,

“when the pandemic started happening, I was 17 — in junior year. And that's like a time of great change

for a lot of people, but with everything that was going on in my own life, and how busy I was, it was hard

to track that kind of change. So depending on myself forced me to slow down and figure some things out.” 

 

Through these reflections, Catie saw changes to her political ideology and worldview.

 

“I think that I was just very radicalized by the events of early 2020. In terms of pandemic response and

racial justice and noticing the inequities within my own school over Zoom, both in the virtual classroom

and otherwise, and so I think that that made me more of a leftist than I already was at that time.”

Catie defines leftism as an ideology further left on the political spectrum than liberalism.“This is a segment of political ideology that does more radical thinking in terms of not just fixing the state, or the way that governments work, but thinks about abolishing that at its root and fixing the problems, not as a band-aid solution, but really, like I said, getting down to the root of them, Catie said. “So that's kind of how I explain leftism — to be more like a radical confrontation of issues.” 

 Her newfound ideology has resulted in a shift in her career outlook.“At the end of sophomore year, I vividly remember I had finished a diplomacy internship. People from the State Department came and shared a kind of a narrow experience. But for me, it really resonated. And so at that point, I was like, I have a very set career path, I'm going to work for the State Department, I'm going to major in international relations and work for the government.” 

However, since confronting her beliefs about government corruption and the necessity for radical change, Catie has changed her plans. “At this point, more of my plans, they have the same goal, which has always been to play to my strengths and help other people, and hopefully try to like, make some substantive change in the world...I still want to pursue those same goals, but right now I'm thinking about being like a journalist. Ideally, like a more independent organization, or even just freelancing and being able to report on conflict or foreign relations [without] that same kind of censorship, or having to be a talking piece for the government, which is what happens when you work for the State Department.”

 

Emma Cole: “Life doesn’t pause.”

 

Emma Cole is a senior at Leodis V. McDaniel High School (formerly known as Madison High School).

She said the pandemic made it seem like life paused, but it didn’t.

 

“Life doesn't pause. And now [it’s like] we skipped ahead a bunch. It's like, Oh, well, no, we keep going,

I guess.” 

 

School has been challenging. Emma, a good student taking several AP courses, mentioned sleeping through

her online class that morning, something that would never happen in person. She’s concerned, too, about

how much she and her fellow students are missing.  

 

“We didn't take a full, eight classes for the entire year, we did like four in the first semester, four in the next.

..In some cases, it was good, because it was less work. But in other ways, because I have AP classes, it was

a lot worse, because I haven't learned any of this stuff in like, half a year. I don't remember any of it. And

I'm supposed to take an AP test on it. That's not gonna work.” 

 

That has her worried about college preparedness.

 

“One thing I have really noticed is I feel very not ready to go to college because I feel like I've never even

finished high school. I'm gonna be one of those weird people like, ‘Oh, yeah, back in high school…’ Oh,

God, probably not. Hopefully not.”

 

Patina Todd: “I’ll be expected to do all of my work as if it's just fine.”

“Not being able to see my friends, for not even the last year of high school...was just really, really sad,” said Patina Todd, another senior at Catlin Gabel School, as they talked about how the pandemic has affected their school community, “Now with college, there's a lot of people that I’m probably not even going to see again that I would have liked to be able to connect to and spend some time with before I left. And I feel like it sucks that I didn’t.”

The separation from others in school made Patina feel as though her role as a senior was diminished.“I really wanted to kind of have the, like, senior role. I guess I'd been looking forward to that and getting to, like, be the biggest person in the high school and help to mentor the younger kids.” 

Patina also shared that trying to balance school, the pandemic, and the national focus on racial injustice was uniquely challenging. 

“There've also been a lot of other stressors this year, including quarantine, but definitely with all the protests and the greater focus on police brutality—which I think is really important. But it also meant that it was kind of stressful for me, as a Black person, to be constantly seeing that in the news, and still see so many people act like this wasn't a problem. That was pretty exhausting.” 

They were frustrated that despite all these pressures, there was still a demand to be just as focused in school as in past years. 

"And then I’ll be expected to do all of my work as if it's just fine.” 

On how the pandemic has changed her outlook broadly, Patina said: 

“I think, in a way, [it] hasn’t really reframed things as much as it just made things more clear. Like, I don’t think much of how I think of the world has changed, per se—if anything, the way I think about myself has changed, the way I see my relationships with my friends and family, that’s changed—but the world itself, I mostly just see some of the issues more clearly. I feel like covid, not even just covid, but the past year, has emphasized a lot of issues in my mind.”