I did a double take when I heard that a highly infectious virus such as Covid-19 had been discovered by scientists! While everyone else was talking about how much of a good thing it is to be able to skip school, I was a big bundle of nerves, worrying about how my O-Levels are going to end up, and whether I would be able to achieve my goals and make my parents proud.

The lockdown stretched on from weeks to months. Soon enough, sincere efforts were made to conduct online classes. However, they were not very fruitful to say the least! As a student I must say, I had lost every bit of motivation and commitment that I had saved up for my very last year in school. I laid in bed with my phone in my hand listening to the teachers trying their level best to elicit answers from the students. Most students were tongue-tied during online classes so lessons weren’t as interesting or very effective. I genuinely want to say, hats off to all our teachers for bearing up with our “speechlessness”. It must have been very frustrating for them.

It was not too late before I realized that this lockdown was going to snatch away my most cherished dreams of academic excellence. Furthermore, I always wanted to achieve fame as a basketball player as I have loved playing the sport all through my life, but that dream too blew up in smoke with the lockdown being imposed. Staying at home is not so bad, but there is absolutely no way to pursue our goals in life. A lot of my happiness lies in the basketball court, though there is just as much happiness when I meet my friends. A whole year has been wasted, and now, I am confused about how I should feel when I am finally about attend normal school again -- euphoric or disappointed?

I was feeling blue with the way things were going during lockdown, but what happened was inevitable. The whole world had to go through a lot of economic depression. As they say “Even storm clouds have a silver lining&r