At home: “Uncertainty destroys the soul, my prospects have deteriorated, I drink much more” – It was like being young in 2020

2019 was terrible so we narrowed it down to 2020, so it will be AZ that year. Then Australia caught fire, Kobe Bryant died and Covid arrived. “

It’s been 9 months and a whole generation of years since then, but in many cases, your future has been determined by things like distance learning, starting a career in a home office, a wasted summer, or simply the fight for health. mental. This is how we got to the end of 2020, but the challenges are unlikely to end in the new year – we spoke with fifteen Hungarian students to find out how they survived the year and what their prospects are for 2021.

Cross-border distance learning from here and beyond

Distance learning was still new in the spring, and in the face of the sudden fright, it seemed the only good solution. By fall, however, I was completely unmotivated – it’s terribly stressful sitting in front of the plane for 10 hours a day, and I don’t even want to think that this is waiting for me for the next six months. “

– said a second-year student studying in Austria, but others complained about the same, there were those who felt the same loss of motivation in their teacher.

The transition to online education torpedoed the essence of university existence. The storks hardly had a chance to pick up the pace – those studying at home only got to meet their classmates in September, and even the hybrid education was just a taste of what they were enrolled in.

The situation also did not spare the second and third years, and let’s not talk about ambitions beyond successful exams and applications: without libraries, study groups, competitions, it is almost impossible to include advantages in the years, only self-education remains an option .

Most of the students abroad were in a hurry: a significant proportion of them have been in Hungary since March, and it also doesn’t seem like they will go back to 2021. In practice, this means that

graduating students complete three of their six semesters in Hungary.

The scale is wide, of course: many returned in September and participated in distance education, which has become an international standard, but there were also those who preferred to postpone a year rather than lose the quality of their degree: many people cannot use the university buildings and facilities, so to no avail. They could earn their degree at home, their practical knowledge could be significantly incomplete.

Start an online career

As a young person, succeeding in the job market is no small challenge, and the pandemic has made all the difference. Although the active labor market is in constant decline, the Hungarian labor market favors in the long term a young and skilled workforce, in 2020 we had to be very lucky to be able to find a job at the beginning of our careers; we learned from the young people we interviewed.

Anyone who came to work in the summer as a recent graduate or student still had time to pick up the pace; They said they weren’t that tired from the fall telecommuting either. Many, on the other hand, were only able to get into the home office, project-based jobs, such as opportunities for architects, were significantly reduced due to financial difficulties and the closure of creative workshops, and learning was almost impossible. And those who did not necessarily seek a job within their field, but for purely financial reasons, encountered similar obstacles: There were almost only jobs available where people had to be in direct contact, which even young people did not necessarily dare to risk.

Luckily for misfortune, even though young people’s incomes have plummeted, they say

It wouldn’t have been much to spend.

Due to missed trips, festivals and programs, at least the young people’s wallets breathed a sigh of relief, but there were those who missed a whole semester of Erasmus so that they could already collect the money reserved for a master’s degree.

Material topics also include the topic of housing. Those who stayed in apartments during the epidemic mainly emphasized two things: The separation made it more difficult to meet their family, and they consumed significantly more due to their full-time stay at home, be it overhead, food or just coffee. Those who returned to the parental home hardly had to deal with the latter, in return they could bear all the other mental burdens of living with their parents even in their twenties.

Mental health: long-term consequences

Although the karma of young people is stabilizing in the first two issues, being less dangerous for them than the coronavirus, or precisely because many of them have the support of their parents, they are one of the biggest losers in mental health during the last nine months., and probably both in the next few years. The following quotes, for example, come from young people in their twenties, who learn at a high level and come from a comfortable social background:

“My brain is constantly learning and doing tasks, I can hardly relax, I am anxious about the lack of social life.”

“My parents are older, I don’t dare to walk among people, so I don’t put them in danger. That’s why I closed myself completely, almost to myself ”.

“Uncertainty destroys the soul, my prospects have deteriorated, in return I drink much more alcohol than I should.”

“My family is rural, I have only seen them once since March: at my grandfather’s funeral.”

“At 18, I was able to plan my future 4 or 5 years in advance, I had big goals. At the moment, there is no certainty with a week in advance and I fear that I will lose my ambitions.

One of the positive social developments in recent years is that more and more movements, celebrities and individuals are raising awareness about the importance of mental health. Thinking of our own soul can take millions of forms, from sports to hiking, from parties to deep conversations, from relaxation to finding new challenges. However, the coronavirus epidemic and accompanying social measures have pushed each young person to the most dangerous place for them: between the four walls.

At a stage in young people’s lives when they begin to face adulthood, difficulties in finding their way, confinement and hopelessness can leave lasting traces. For example, many mention the phenomenon of the “quarantine roller coaster”: many have described the time they spend at home as a curve with increasing amplitudes and, over time, rejoicing in new things, but in return the lows darken and there is no transition between the two. These lows could have serious long-term consequences: Experts say the epidemic could turn young people into a post-traumatic generation.

“The biggest problem is that there is nothing to look forward to: I don’t see a moment in front of me where I can let go like I did before the epidemic.”

Said a 21-year-old graduate student.

The problem is not necessarily that this year you had to relax by Lake Balaton instead of on the beach, or you could just dance at garden parties and not on the island. The problem was caused by constant anxiety at the back of the human brain:

It was simply impossible to be young in 2020, as they were used to before.

Most of the respondents emphasized that they did not necessarily fear themselves, but their relatives at risk, but many also raised the question of not knowing what the long-term complications of even an asymptomatic infection might be.

The athletes were given a special slap in the face: gyms they knew to be avoided, team sports were a constant risk factor, but there was also a competitive athlete who only went to train five times since March because his sport limits him in interiors. While it was still easy to alleviate these difficulties with exercise outdoors in the spring, as winter approached, opportunities for outdoor sports or even play continued to decline.

“How do I tell my girlfriend that I don’t dare to meet her because she is constantly in community?”

He asked the poetic question of a 22-year-old college student who had met his partner in the early fall.

The final nail in the coffin for many was their relationship, or simply the lack of it. Those who live together have been taught a serious lesson over the past 9 months: Confinement can be detrimental to all human relationships, and none of those surveyed said they had many tense moments with their partner. On the contrary, anyone who was not under the same roof with their partner entered a practically remote relationship, taking on additional burdens on their shoulders in addition to all that there were so far. But being single was not easier either: you could only meet new people in the summer or through acquaintances of acquaintances, and new relationships were developing in more swampy terrain than ever.

Alternative realities

Fortunately, it was also during the epidemic and there is something to rejoice over. We’ve heard from others that the summer slackening gave momentum to October, and while the late fall was a collective low, the vaccine can already be seen as light at the end of the tunnel.

Young people were at the forefront in finding alternative and safe solutions for Covid for the time they spent together. In the spring, Zoom contests, board game nights, birthday parties gathered – similar to distance education, during the first wave of the epidemic, young people still looked at digital communication with bright eyes.

After the summer and with the arrival of the next school year, their appeal waned, but everyone had enough experience to be able to organize relatively safe programs. More and more people were going on trips, social bubbles burst where only isolated people gathered, but even a free video game conquered the market: in a board game called Among Us, the crew of a spaceship had to find the rogue among them and the investigation went on for hours. it could tie companies of up to ten. In early fall, multiple teams went into ten-day volunteer quarantine so they could spend a long weekend together in a basically coronavirus-free world.

“I’m tired of being blamed for everything, like we have nothing to lose”

Young people were easy targets for public communication as the main causes of the second wave. However, even if this were true, it is worth noting in late 2020 that young people have suffered at least as much as last year:

a whole generation has caused a break in the life of the epidemic, and they will need no little strength to get back on track.