As a post-pandemic graduate, I feel like I made it through the darkness and out the other side

This First Person article is written by Maham Zafar, a graduating Grade 12 student in Regina. For more information about First Person stories, see the FAQ.

My heart dropped when I looked at my marks and saw a near-failing grade in my Grade 11 math class.

My eyes went to my other marks, none of which were looking that good either. I could feel the anxiety in my throat.

How had this happened? I'd always been a high achiever. But my high school experience, like my marks, had been anything but normal.

Thanks to COVID-19, the graduating class of 2024 has had a high school experience that's very different from the movies. Where were the loud and bustling hallways or the noisy excitement of extracurricular clubs and teams getting together? 

At the start of high school, I walked into the half-empty building alongside my fellow Grade 9 students and thought, "Well, this isn't how I imagined it."   

Our school had resumed in-person learning, but in masked and distanced groups of cohorts. Without my friends, I felt alone in a weird, new environment. 

I'm a loud person by nature. I talk a lot, and I can't stand awkward silences. Every class was consistently dead quiet. I would be the only one who'd speak up. It became so extreme that teachers would make it a point to ask, "Does anyone other than Maham have an answer?" 

Every day was dull and I came to dread school. As COVID-19 cases rose, we had to move back to distance learning. I tried to focus but it proved impossible. I would just give up and skip virtual classes, sleep in or call my friends during class times. Between distance learning and alternating days in person, I could feel how the disruption of school really messed with me.  

School resumed as normal in Grade 11 but perhaps it's not surprising that everything caught up with me the moment I looked at my grades and realized how far things had sunk. It felt like I had been left behind a long time ago and anxiety held me back from thinking I could work my way back up. 

But I'd been here before. I had seen my teachers crying the day we were sent home in March of 2020. We were all scared and had no idea what we were facing. 

I realized then — I'm still alive. I'm still safe and healthy, and so are the rest of my classmates. So I thought to myself, "If all of that happened and turned out OK, why can't I catch up?"

That was the point I realized that I didn't go through this alone; my entire class and other students around the world had to go through this experience. It helped alleviate any stress I had and get back to work on my studies.

I began poring through online videos for math tutorials and asking my older brother for guidance, spending extra hours outside of class to build back my marks. That's brought me to this moment, in which I have higher grades than ever before. In the fall, I will go to the University of Regina, armed with a determination to go to law school one day.