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Out of a Crisis: The Voices of Our Students

There’s nothing like being a teenager during this pandemic

Erin Roth

“Out of a Crisis: The Voices of Our Students” is a new series, launched by the Globe’s Great Divide team, that publishes student essays, poems, artwork, and videos featuring teenage perspectives on learning and living amid a pandemic. The stories are published in the Great Divide newsletter.

About the author: Hiwan Maru, 17, is a senior at the Muriel S. Snowden International School at Copley. Listen to Maru read her poem:

Nothing Like Being A Teenager During This Pandemic

Wake up in the morning, and get myself cleaned

The only Joe I meet is my morning coffee

Two sugars, wait, no three sugars, or I’ll fall asleep

Cameras on, mics off, five days a week

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Stay in the house, no need to take the bus

Hours reserved for hearing know-it-all adults talk, talk, talk

They know books, but do they know us?

If they miss the mark on reliability, who do we trust?


COVID-19 puts the “dead” in “deadlines”

Outside everyday, too scared of opening the blinds

Encouraged to work hard, encouraged to stay kind

Used to be there for everyone else’s problems, but now I got mine


April, June, August, October, still here

Want to stay optimistic since I’m graduating this year

Can’t help the negative thoughts, can’t help the fear

I know where I want to go, but where I will go is painfully unclear