Opening for Ed Narrative – Marc Mentor

Everyone remembers what they were doing during quarantine in 2020. For me, quarantine started on March 13, 2020, when I was in my last quarter of 8th grade at William Carr JHS 194 in the upper side of Queens. The same week quarantine started, I moved to Long Island into a big house where I had a massive room I had to fight my sister tooth and nail for and my mom “She’s a girl she needs the space” only for me to eventually do nothing with the space or big walking closet no decoration at all just a room, a bed, a TV, and me , and I took it as a blessing that we had online classes now. I wasn’t the best student, but I also wasn’t the worst. I definitely didn’t try to apply myself too often. I was a petty kid; the only time I tried hard was out of spite, both to people who bullied me and those who tried to put me down. That is to say, it’s not like I never tried out of my own accord, but it was rare. Of the 7 classes I had each day online, the only class I remember is my math class, partly because she was such a nice teacher that I felt cared for her students and tried to understand them on an personal educational level. She organized a care package for each student she had that year. The missing pieces of my memory of other classes speak to the very low amount of care and diligence I had for my studies at the time. I definitely failed that last quarter, but due to everyone’s grades from the last quarter being so statistically low, that quarterly average was waived from our final GPA for the entirety of middle school, and I graduated middle school.

I started high school at Bayside High School, also in Queens, and for the first 3 months of 9th grade, I started by attending the orientation. But my habits had not changed from when I was younger. In fact, they evolved to where I specifically learned to listen to the footsteps within my house of my family members, but specifically my mom. All of this just so I would stay up late every night, weekday to weekend, playing video games and waking up at 8 am to attend my classes, where I would join the class then almost immediately fall asleep on camera each class and each day. Eventually, the teacher would call my mom, and she would come up the stairs. I liked my house because the flooring had no shag or padding; I could hear everyone at all times walking or talking. Using this, the second I heard the creak of the staircase flooring, I would be alerted and jolted conscious, but I would still be sleeping at the same time just in case I was wrong and could go back to sleep. I always knew my mom was coming when I would hear the first creak; then the following creaks would loom nearer to my door, and I would anticipate the jiggle of my door handle with the following echoing through possibly the entire house “DAEEEEEL!!! WHY ARE YOU SLEEPING YOUR TEA-“, where I would immediately jump up and pretend to be studying “What’s wrong mum I’ve been here this whole time” She would then leave until the next hour where the exact same thing would happen again each day. I would wonder sometimes if I put this amount of effort into educational subjects the amount of work I would get done. My first uniform that year was my blanket and pillow each day, in and day out. Safe to say, I was very careless with my studies, considering the school was considered a smart school that I had to take an exam to be able to attend. During orientation, the principal stated, “Everyone, we do our jobs so well, we don’t even get much money from the government, we are basically broke.” This statement was true; they did have some of the hardest classes I’ve ever had. The teachers were teaching similar subjects to other schools, but it was definitely at a higher level.