Personal Narrative Essay:How COVID-19 Changed My Life

In what way has COVID-19 changed your life? It has undeniably had an effect on almost everything this past year and a half. Daily activities came to an abrupt stop, schools shut down, stores had inadequate supplies, people were dying at an insane rate. Throughout all of this, there have been changes made in everyone’s lives in some way, whether major or minor. Education arguably underwent some of the most major changes where virtual learning forced students and teachers to find new approaches to learning, despite the unfamiliar circumstances. This gave everyone a fortuitous opportunity for self-reflection and self-improvement. Personally, I learned the value of discipline and its role in my own life. 

During quarantine, school became an entirely different situation than it was in person, when in an actual school building there was only one objective, to learn. But, this wasn’t true with virtual learning, the entire environment shifted, and I was completing my work in my own home. When I was trying to navigate this world, many different factors came into play, but what stood out the most to me was the infinite amount of distractions in my house that were far more appealing than school. It was difficult to shut out those things and focus, I found myself waiting for the motivation to start my work and procrastinating for days or even weeks at times. The motivation I could find came without warning and was short-lived. This left me in a cycle where I would stop doing my work until I felt suddenly motivated and then complete as much work as possible before it stopped. The transition into virtual learning was not working for me. My grades were dropping, I was missing my classes at an alarming rate, and my mental health was declining. This was not normal for me, before COVID I had never had a grade below a B but now I wasn’t getting over a D. I quickly realized that I needed to make some changes in order to stabilize my education again. 

After attempting to use my old methods for virtual learning, I found out that I needed something new and discovered self-discipline. The definition of self-discipline is, "the ability to regulate one's emotions, thoughts, and behavior in the face of temptations and impulses." My first thought after hearing about this was that it was insanely apocryphal, all my life I had been working around motivation, never pushing myself any further than that, and I was just fine. But I knew that with this new learning system I needed to make changes if I wanted to succeed, so I tried it. I didn’t need to make a ton of changes, I just stopped giving into the temptations to procrastinate on everything. I never realized how much this would benefit me, everyone has needed to overcome procrastination at some point but when using it as a tool for everything there is a distinct difference that can be seen. When I learned how to rise above those impulses I was able to see an exponential rise in productivity. My grades were rising again, and I was back on track finally. Although I used this mostly for school, that wasn’t the only aspect of life where I could apply discipline. I started using this to overcome my procrastination towards the physical, social, and emotional things that I was putting off. This allowed me to grow as an individual and finally develop a system that worked for me. After acquiring this tool, I saw many positive changes in my life. 

A great deal of the information that I learned about myself during quarantine were frivolous, but learning that I work best using self-discipline has definitely helped me excel. This discovery has led to many positive changes in my life, for example, I have developed a routine that works very well for me even after the quarantine. Even though I was doing acceptable before this, I can definitely see a growth after attaching this tool in my life. Self-discipline is an extremely advantageous tool for everyone to develop and integrate into their daily and personal lives.