When creating my poem, I sat on my bed, the place where I spent majority of my 2020 year. It was at night when the idea struck me that I should do a poem since I have a nice interest into that type of literature. Every thought and feeling I could pull from my brain of how 2020 went made its way onto my computer as I typed. Struggling with mental health, BLM movements, and of course the pandemic. As a teen I have a lot going on for me and the world most likely already has one story stereotypes on teens. We have a voice that needs to be heard by everyone. From ideas of how to fix schools to how to help our community. We can stand hand in hand (Figuratively because of the pandemic) and help our world with each step we take. But for that to happen we need everyone’s voice heard. My poem relates to the theme of being a teen in the year of 2020 because during quarantine a lot of people changed and a lot of teens have either become mature or struggling with mental health problems. It also talks about the BLM movement within this year and how as teens we can help. Overall, my poem shows that as teens we should not be overlooked because we can do so much more than what others think

I started this piece halfway through October and finished it on 11/11. I used an application called Krita to create it. This piece shows a lot of my experience with 2020, especially the pandemic. It shows how schools closed and I had to take learning virtually, how I slowly started getting disconnected from friends, and the insomnia I suddenly had to deal with. And during those sleepless nights, I would think. I would think about the time when I could go to school and see my friends every day, about the time where I could go in public not having to worry about what I’m touching and breathing, about the time when people didn’t seem so divided, but most of all, about the time when everything was alright. These sleepless nights lasted forever, every time leaving me more empty than the last. And the moment everything turned completely dark, the sun would rise. Every day the sun kept rising and that would keep me going. A new day meant a new opportunity. The sun would always remind me of how beautiful the world is and it would push me to keep going, to see what the future holds for me.

I started this project when it was assigned in my english class during the first month of my freshman year. It was a wild first year project but I expect nothing less from 2020. I created this piece in Philadelphia and the entirety of the story takes place here in philly, my home. The beginning of this pandemic started almost a year ago now so it’s hard to pin point exactly how my story began, but I can safely say it started as any normal cliche pandemic movie or book starts. “I never expected it to end up like this, but I guess we just didn’t want to think what this plaque could really turn out to be” Type Deal. If it wasn’t already obvious as to how my story relates to this, this story reflects on my thoughts and experiences during the pandemic. It encompasses the coming weeks before lockdown and how my school reacted to these sudden closings of schools through out the district.

When I was younger, I wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to be a teenage rock star living a double life. But here I am now, a teenager, living in a time during covid-19. I decided to write a love letter to my electric guitar because when I think about covid, the first thing that comes to mind is growth. I feel like in some ways my electric guitar has taught me so many things. It taught me to find beauty in a hopeless place. When covid first hit the world, I was terrified. I would sit at home overthinking everything. Over thinking about death, my family and friends, and thinking about everything that can go wrong. I have really bad anxiety and usually how I cope with it is by hanging out with my friends, but now with covid, I can’t escape. There was no one I could turn to and covid was was corrupting my mind. This was also the time when I haven’t played my electric guitar for a little over a year. I remember I’ve always been interested in music, ever since I was about two years old. When I decided to learn electric guitar, I was so passionate about it I would put all my time and energy into learning new songs and melodies. But once school started, my electric guitar was left untouched. I wanted my letter to capture how much music helped me get through these hard times that were extremely rough for me. My passion will always be my safe place, and covid really amplified that hypothesis making it more true every single day. When I first played my electric guitar during quarantine, I was really rusty. I was so focused on getting it right that I perfected a song in one sitting. I wasn’t thinking about covid for the first time ever. I was at peace for the first time in forever and that’s when I realized that music was truly my first love. When I was younger, I wanted to be a rock star. But who would have thought that I would just be a normal teenager, playing her maple amber wood guitar in a world full of catastrophe. So if I ever fulfill my childhood dream of being a rock star, thank you covid for helping me fall so deeply in love with music all over again.

I don’t think anyone imagined 2020 being like this, keeping 6 feet apart from each other, not having normal in-person classes, and staying inside almost all day. Along with a pandemic, the crumbling of the rest of the world & economy is there too. In this image, my mom and my younger brother are standing apart from each other while wearing masks. I decided to take this photograph at a school that’s been under construction since I was young, since it shows how things take a long time to be repaired. This school is walking distance from my home. I have seen this building almost every single day on my way home, and I’ve always wondered when it would finally be finished. The day I took this picture, I actually saw a construction worker’s car leaving the premises. Finally, this place is being fixed up!

I know things take a while to be put back together if they are deeply damaged. For example, people are fighting for their religions, their people, their rights, and themselves. People are making their points through actions instead of words. The BLM movement has been a really big part of 2020, and to make change, some people would loot businesses. I live in West Philadelphia, and some places that were raided and looted happened very close to my home; this hurts, because these are places the community go to shop and live their daily lives. It brings sadness that people have to show their feelings through this type of action. If nobody listens, they have to take action. Still, my family supports this movement, because equality between all races is right, and everyone should be treated as an equal no matter their status, skin color, or ethnicity.

When I took this picture, the weather was chilly, and the sky wasn’t as bright, which caused the color of the image to be more dull. I was satisfied with this, because this year hasn’t been very bright from the pandemic and the personal and political conflicts we’ve faced. It has been a year for change and coming together, and hopefully things will be fixed so we can live normally next year. 2020 has been a building that’s been in repair for far too long, and slowly we’re working together to put it back together.

This piece of writing was created on Wednesday, November 11th at 10:00pm. I created this piece on a laptop at home, with the help of google docs. I made this piece come to life, by applying my thoughts and feelings into a brief, yet powerful, essay. My writing relates to the theme of being a teenager during this tumultuous year, because I was able to dive down into the core of a topic that’s not being talked about as much as it should. This topic of racism is being ignored, yet pushed to the point where people want it to be forgotten: ignored. Being a teenager in this generation is not as easy as one may think. There are a lot of consequences, injustices, oppression, chaos, and much more that my generation faces. I have chosen to use my voice to speak on something that others may fear to speak on; afraid of the threats and hatred that will be planted onto them making the eyes of the oppressor watch them. I have decided to speak on the world pandemic, no not the coronavirus but the other racism. I want you and others to know that BLM is more than a trend, that we are just as worthy as our oppressors.

I started this Contest I wanna say in early October for a school project. I worked on it, really the only place I could right now, at home. I was originally going to do an essay but then it started to become mostly informational and not my feeling, which isn’t how I wanted it to turn out. So I did a letter (as you can tell) because I felt like I could really put in information and then mold my feelings around it without sounding so formal. Instead of completely focusing on how 2020 has affected me (Gen Z) I chose to write about the ways that Donald Trump has handled 2020 and how that has affected me (Gen Z). The way he has handled 2020 has not only affected out now but also our future. That’s really an awful thing. If things like corona had been handled with more care so many would still be alive and we wouldn’t be in the place we are in now. If he had just taken one second to actually hear what we have to say about police brutality then maybe, just maybe it would have gotten just a little bit better.

The pandemic has been an emotional ride. And since so much emotion can be shown in music, I wanted to make a dynamic composition that represented my own feelings throughout these past months. The beginning of my song represents “normal” life. For this, I took one of the most common “pop” chord progressions: I-V-vi-IV, and played a basic rhythm on guitar, with some simple drums. It’s a boring, basic resting place, but we accept it as normal. I then abruptly cut the intro so the happy music spins down and is replaced by distorted drums and a mood of confusion. This is the time of chaos where the song creates a “wait, what?” feeling, like when I suddenly couldn’t go to school or see my friends. After this section it switches to an uncertain mood. In the beginning of the pandemic during lockdown, I remember my parents being scared that they or our friends were going to get COVID. I remember sitting on the couch and feeling like all of the chaos was circling around me and I was just confused. I didn’t understand what was really happening, to be honest I was just inconvenienced. At the end of the third section it starts to speed up, creating a very unpleasant feeling. Each bar the tempo increases which makes me feel really unsettled, and reflects the weird “what?” moments of the pandemic. The fast tempo also creates a scared feeling. I remember being out in public with my parents around people, and finally being really scared. I was scared that my family was going to get COVID and I couldn’t stand that. At the end of my song I took the opening guitar, but reversed it to make it sound sadder and more emotional. I also pitched it up to create a kind of spooky uncanny feeling. What we’re in now is like a mixed up, reversed way of normal life. I go to virtual school and everywhere with a mask. This is our “new normal,” and I’ve fallen into a new rhythm.

My concept is that we have so much time being trapped at home but once you start to think about it, you can’t recall what you’ve done. It’s like it never happened. I am a reflective person and when I can’t remember what I did today, then did today even happen? Everyone is in quarantine nowadays, so there is more time to reflect on yourself. It’s not something many people do on a day to day basis. Then there’s other things going on and it makes it even harder to focus on yourself but then we can’t block out everything and pretend it’s not happening. Sometimes it’s like we have nowhere to run. It feels as if this is never going to end. It’s been hard to constantly have a positive mindset being thrown into a situation like this. As a freshman, I lost my chance of making friends and walking into my school to meet all my kind teachers. I’m stuck with awkward zoom calls everyday with people that I never met before. I definitely know I’m not the only one that is going through this. I have a sister in senior year and she lost her homecoming. It was something she was looking forward to and I bet many others were too. We are all at loss. We can only go up from here. We all know social media has been a lifesaver during this crisis but it’s not always as helpful. Social media has definitely gone more toxic during this time period. We are all constantly breathing down each other’s throats trying to find some sort of drama or entertainment, and if there isn’t any, make some. For me personally, I have seen toxicity gone up and it has affected me. Teens of our generation rule social media. If someone is not as educated then that’s their problem but once they bring it to a platform and speak about false claims, it’s everyone’s problem now. It’s just if you engage or not. I wanted to write about our “loss” time because it’s not something people think about. I believe we can all be productive during this crisis in our own ways but sitting there isn’t going to help. Time is precious especially now. There is no going back so moving forward is the only path we have.