I had actually read both the boy who was raised as a dog and the New Yorker piece before this course and they both really struck a chord - especially when read together! We know about lasting implications of trauma re: teens and kids, as seen in the story of Tina and the photos/reflections of teens on their covid experience (quick aside: these photos are so amazing & photojournalism of teens amidst global pandemic trauma... already interesting now and going to be so interesting in the future!). What felt especially salient to me was the self-awareness of the impact of this large scale trauma on these teens! Kids know what's up, they know so much more and are so much more articulate about it than we give them credit for, and seeing these quotes from high schoolers re:their pandemic lives demonstrates that so clearly. The shrimp quote below really got me the first time I read this piece for some reason, I think its wild to hear kids in their own words express the emotional experience of stress/pressure/overwhelm/etc. The number of kids in this piece who were worried about school work or felt like no work got done for a year and THAT was the big problem... crazy! Such a bummer to really see how much capitalism gets people, even young people. I think a lot, all the time really, about K-8 aged kids like 10 years post pandemic. What are 2020 kindergarteners gunna be like in high school? The mass trauma of isolation at such a socially important age is surely going to be something to reckon with in 10 years. In middle and high school we're already seeing such intense social consequences, thinking about 5 year olds is really scary!
"We are in this state of: You just put all these live shrimp into a boiling pot, and you just expected them to hang in there, and wait for the finished product. But they are in this pot and they’re squirming in there, and they have no idea what’s going on."
"It started becoming a cycle. It felt like a pain in the chest. Nothing was relieving it, especially sleep. I would go in my room for hours, and my mom would wake me up to eat."
"I wrote a poem about how I felt like I was stuck in a coffin—so trapped and overwhelmed. The person I was before and after—I am completely different."