At Assembly last week, one of the Lyall House Captains for 2021, Zain, shared his reflection on 2020 and what he learnt about facing challenges and seeing new ways of learning. As February’s five-day lockdown commenced, Zain was unsure of how he would cope with another period of online learning and not being able to see his friends, especially on his birthday! But his sense of community and his new-found resilience has meant that he is able to face new challenges and accept lessons as they come.
Accepting lessons as they come
The Year 2020, a year of drama and chaos, kind of like a Netflix series. Firstly, we started with the summer bushfires. To refresh your memory, Australia had devastating bush fires during January 2020. So many houses and land were burnt to the ground, and many animals, including koalas, died or lost their habitats.
Towards the end of January, the football club I barrack for, the mighty Bombers, and my father’s company, HairHouse, got together to raise money for the bushfire victims. They did this by shaving the club Captain’s hair. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to cut off the first braid from Dyson Heppel’s locks. Overall, we managed to raise $300,000 from that event.
In February 2020, my family and I celebrated my 11th birthday, and I started Year 5. I was very excited and had many questions and thoughts about the upcoming year. However, during the fourth week of Term 1, on a Monday night, I remember my friends messaging me that we had no school on Tuesday because Carey Kew had been impacted by COVID-19. This was a virus that was starting to create problems around the world.
Honestly, at first, I was so happy that I had no school. I could rest during day and keep up with my schoolwork with a schedule that suited me!
We were able to go back to school for a short time before we went into a second lockdown. But this time it was more serious. Not only were people fighting for toilet paper, but some people were fighting for their lives. Every day, Victoria would average 300 to 700 new COVID-19 cases. Now at this point I had online school and no hope of returning back to the Donvale campus. Thankfully, we were able to return back to school at the end of Term 4.
Mid-February 2021: Daniel Andrews, the Premier of Victoria, announces that Victoria will be going into a five-day lockdown. We are not allowed to go to school on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. I thought I would be happy, but secretly, I was starting to get a little bit nervous and quite scared. People started panicking and fighting for toilet paper all over again. Just like last year, I was getting ready to celebrate my 12th birthday and ‘bam’, along comes a five-day lockdown. My entire class ended up singing happy birthday to me over our Teams conference, which was not what I was expecting, but very special all the same.
2020 also had some tragic moments for me. My father lost his best friend and business partner, and also one of my role models, to cancer. This was heart breaking. But there were also some amazing highlights. My Uncle Nic had a baby daughter Havana, and I’m now a proud big cousin. I was also lucky enough to be honoured as Lyall House Captain, a role I respect greatly and am very proud of.
2020 taught me that life will have many challenges and to accept these lessons as they come.
Zain
Lyall Captain, Carey Donvale
