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Covid Kids: How leaving school in a pandemic is affecting teenagers

It’s tough enough leaving school at all. But doing it as a pandemic surges around you? SAWeekend’s Covid Kids reveal the trials and tribulations of 2021.

It was always going to be a challenging year. The first one out of school always is. It’s a year teenagers leave the protection of the classroom and enter the adult world, where they have the freedom to succeed or fail on the back of their own choices.

It can be a daunting prospect, and for the school leavers of 2020, their first 12 months of proper adulting also came with a pandemic, border closures, statewide lockdowns, economic uncertainty and ever-changing social distancing regulations.

This cohort faced more challenges than perhaps any other graduates in generations – and all this came on the back of a final year of schooling marred by similar upheavals.

Adaptability and resilience have become second nature for a group of nine South Australian teenagers who SAWeekend last year introduced as the Covid Kids.

In January last year we met these impressive young adults just as they were about to embark on their post-school adventure.

The plan was to touch base with them each year, to see how their lives were progressing in an attempt to unpack the long-term impact of surviving the most stressful year of their life during a time of global upheaval.

Most had assumed they were over the worst of it. That there was little chance Covid could be as disruptive in 2021 as it had been in 2020.

For some of them though, it was even worse.

Covid kids Awur Deng, Macie Roberts, Kaine Baldwin, Tilly Tjala Thomas, Toby Judd, Josh Vittorelli, Kimberlyn Selvan, Samuel Nitschke catch up in Adelaide’s Botanic Park. Picture: Tricia Watkinson
Covid kids Awur Deng, Macie Roberts, Kaine Baldwin, Tilly Tjala Thomas, Toby Judd, Josh Vittorelli, Kimberlyn Selvan, Samuel Nitschke catch up in Adelaide’s Botanic Park. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

Consider, for example, the last 12 months of promising young footballer Kaine Baldwin, who moved to the Gold Coast in January last year to train with AFL club the Gold Coast Suns and study at Bond University.

Baldwin had been touted as a potential top 10 draftee before being struck down with two knee reconstructions and clubs overlooked him in the 2020 draft. A couple of months into his time on the Gold Coast, though, he received a phone call from Essendon, who flew him down to Melbourne for a medical check-up.

A few weeks later the Bombers called again and told him they would select him as a rookie during the AFL’s supplemental selection period.

And so, in April he packed his bags again and moved to Melbourne – a city that has endured more days in lockdown than any other city in the world.

As a listed AFL player, Baldwin’s movements were even more limited than the general public and more than once throughout the season he was forced to quickly pack his bags and board a plane with teammates to beat lockdowns and border closures.

“This year has been totally controlled by it (Covid) basically,” he says. “Every week it was always up and down and there was always changing schedules because of it.

“There are examples where we, as a club, had to get out of Victoria to escape the virus, or escape a lockdown. We got 9am messages to say we were on a flight in the early afternoon that same day to go away for weeks – or for a time that wasn’t set out yet.

“So definitely this past year has been more impacted (by Covid).”

The year was also difficult for Baldwin’s parents back in Adelaide, who were unable to visit their son as he lived out his football dream. And many of his new teammates trying to break into the AFL side were frustrated when the VFL season was cancelled in July, denying them an opportunity to prove their worth.

Season 2021 for Baldwin, though, was about following a strict training program aimed at strengthening his injured knee.

Footballer Kaine Baldwin. Picture: Tricia Watkinson
Footballer Kaine Baldwin. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

The 194cm key forward impressed in a couple of VFL scratch matches (ironically, one was in a team made up of Essendon and Gold Coast players) late in the year and has his sights set on an AFL debut in 2022.

The former Westminster College captain looks back on his turbulent year philosophically.

“I feel like I kind of worked really well in that environment,” he says when asked about living through Melbourne’s long lockdowns.

“I found I haven’t really been too worried about it or feel like I’ve been missing out on a whole lot. I feel like I’ve been engaged with a lot of other things – I started learning French in my spare time and have picked up a fair bit of reading as well.

“I’ve had other things to do and at the club, the schedule of our training is pretty full-on anyway. It’s not really like I’m sitting around all day doing nothing.”

He admits it’s hard not to dream about debuting in 2022, and the possibility of being part of Essendon teams running out for blockbuster Anzac Day or Dreamtime games in front of a packed Melbourne Cricket Ground. Like all AFL players, he’s hoping the days of playing in front of empty stadiums are over.

“Having not played for such a long time (because of the knee injuries), I’m excited to finally have that opportunity to play some full games, and hopefully they’re AFL games,” he says.

“And I guess the career, as a whole, is incredible. I’m very lucky to be in an environment where I get to work with a group of 40 other guys and exercise for a living.”

Dancer Macie Roberts. Picture: Tricia Watkinson
Dancer Macie Roberts. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

Prospective professional dancer Macie Robertsis also well on track to living her dream and, like Baldwin, has endured a year she could have never envisioned when she moved to Coolangatta last January.

Roberts was a standout dancer at TK Studios in Adelaide’s northeastern suburbs and her star has continued to rise at Dance Force on the Gold Coast, despite a year of mass disruption caused by lockdowns and border closures. Talented dancers from across Australia flock to the Dance Force studios, in Tweed Heads, on the NSW side of the Queensland-NSW border, every year.

Accommodation can be hard to come across, so Roberts and her family jumped at the opportunity to share a house with two other South Australian dancers on the other side of the border, in Coolangatta.

The state border between her home and the Dance Force studio was of little consequence … until statewide lockdowns became a regular feature of life in 2021 on the eastern seaboard.

That dotted line on a map then became a defining factor for everyone living in the Coolangatta-Tweed Heads community.

“Whenever Queensland went into lockdown, I had these friends who had a spare bedroom, so I stayed with them in NSW,” Roberts says. “But there were some people who had to do Zoom, they couldn’t get across.

“And then, the other way, when NSW went into lockdown, we hired out studios in Queensland – we had to do the opposite.”

Even when NSW came out of lockdown, the Queensland border was shut to its southern neighbours for most of the year and what should have been a five-minute trip to get from dance to home often blew out to more than an hour because of long delays at police checkpoints.

Border closures meant Roberts was only able to return to see her family once during the year, and dates and destinations for Dance Force’s annual national tour were not finalised until the last minute. The tour ultimately bypassed Victoria but visited every other state and she was one of the stars of the show when her family and friends packed out Golden Grove Arts Centre when it came through SA in November.

“I don’t think it’s affected me too much,” she says when asked if the disruptions and uncertainties have caused her much stress throughout the year. “It’s just really learning to adapt to new things.”

The fact she spent the year doing what she loved – dancing five days a week – made it all worthwhile, as did the fact that job prospects for dancers are on the rise as cruise ships and international travel gradually returned in the back end of the year.

Singer Tilly Tjala Thomas. Picture: Tricia Watkinson
Singer Tilly Tjala Thomas. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

The prospects for aspiring singer-songwriter Tilly Tjala Thomas are also on the rise, despite a year of gig and festival cancellations and one of her producers being unable to leave Melbourne.

Thomas won a swathe of awards in 2021, including a National Indigenous Music Awards Unearthed gong, the Emily Burrows award, and best Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Artist at the SA Music Awards.

She released her debut track, Ngana Nyunyi, will release two more music videos later this month, and completed a year studying music at University of Adelaide’s Centre for Aboriginal Studies and Music. Oh, and in December she welcomed a baby sister into the world.

The cancellations of festivals such as the national Groovin the Moo concerts and Kangaroo Island’s New Shoots Music Festival put a dampener on her year, but she still scored plenty of gigs in the second half of the year.

“I haven’t been able to go interstate and do different gigs, and even with one of my producers living in Melbourne, if I work with her I have to do it through Zoom,” she says.

“It has been hard for the music scene this year, for businesses and dancing and stuff. And because I’ve only been going out for the last year from when I turned 18, it’s weird.

“For some people it will be really different but for me it’s probably all I know, because I’ve only been out and about in the last year while Covid has been around.”

Despite the impact of Covid on the music scene and what she describes as some “weird” restrictions, Thomas – like most of our Covid Kids – is relatively pleased with the state government’s handling of the crisis.

Hospitality and tourism student Madeline Ryan in Cairns.
Hospitality and tourism student Madeline Ryan in Cairns.

But for Madeline Ryan, the restrictions placed on the hospitality sector have just been a step too far.

“I think they’ve been extremely harsh,” Ryan, who started the year planning a career in teaching but switched to tourism and hospitality mid-year, says.

“I’ve just seen article after article in The Advertiser about businesses closing because they are just under so much financial stress because they can’t have dancing and they can’t do this and that.

“It’s just definitely unfair.”

Her career switch is an interesting choice at a time when the industry is reeling, but she says the sector has always been a passion and believes it still has a bright future.

“You can already see it starting to pick up again right now,” she says from her new home in Cairns, where she is working as a front office all-rounder at Pullman Cairns International.

“Although the international borders have been shut off, it’s been a really good period for us to go back and explore around Australia.

“People forget we live in such a beautiful place. So that’s one of the positive things that has come out of Covid.”

Border closures delayed Ryan’s start in Cairns and she was forced to drive to northern Queensland via the Northern Territory because the Queensland border was shut to anyone entering from NSW when she made the journey. But she maintains that her life was affected more by the pandemic in 2020, when her Year 12 school formal was postponed and graduation ceremony curtailed, than 2021.

Law and politics student Awur Deng. Picture: Tricia Watkinson
Law and politics student Awur Deng. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

It’s a sentiment shared by Awur Deng, who felt a twang of sadness when she returned to Parafield Gardens High School for an awards ceremony late in 2021 to support her younger sister.

Deng was the school’s captain in 2020 and still laments the opportunities and experiences she missed because of Covid – even simple things such as having parents attend a graduation ceremony.

“The person that I passed down the captaincy to, she was able to do heaps more things that I wasn’t able to do,” she says. “I guess I was kind of like ‘gee, I kind of wish I got to do that’.”

Deng spent 2021 studying law and international relations at Adelaide University and says the pandemic, which forced a mixture of online and in-class learning, restricted new students’ ability to interact and socialise.

“You can’t really make plans through Zoom,” she says. “So listening to a lecture you can’t really talk to people around you, so that was a bit hard.

“I always thought that you’d be going out for drinks between classes or hanging out with friends but because we are jumping from online to in-person (learning), it’s hard to make plans.”

All of the Covid Kids say they are happy to be vaccinated and have had either one or two doses of the Covid jab.

Deng baulks at the idea of vaccine mandates but is conscious of playing her role in reducing the workload on essential workers and keeping society safe.

She says living through the past two years of Covid has turned her into a “neat freak” who is constantly conscious of germs and the possibility of catching the virus.

Aerospace engineering and science/physics student Samuel Nitschke. Picture: Tricia Watkinson
Aerospace engineering and science/physics student Samuel Nitschke. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

Samuel Nitschke, who moved to Adelaidin January from his hometown of Loxton to start a double degree in aerospace engineering and science/physics at the University of Adelaide, agrees.

“I certainly wash my hands better now,” he says, when asked which of his personality traits have come to the fore after two years in a pandemic.

“You’re more aware of how you are interacting with the environment around you. I’m making sure I’m being hygienic and safe. I’m checking the Covid exposure sites semi-regularly to make sure I’m not a risk to the people around me – which is really important.”

The Loxton High School 2020 dux also pinpoints improved adaptability and the ability to change plans at short notice as one of the benefits of living through a pandemic.

“You definitely seize opportunities a little faster, because you don’t know how long they are going to last,” he says. “Especially with density requirements and that kind of thing, you’ve got to make sure you do what you can while you are able to – of course in a safe manner without putting anyone else at risk.”

The new world of online lectures diminished students’ ability to meet new people, so Nitschke joined clubs such as the Australian Youth Aerospace Association and University of Adelaide Space Society.

He experienced first-hand the perils of ever-changing social distancing rules while trying to help organise events for these clubs.

“Trying to run events during Covid is basically gambling,” he says. “We had to adjust and readjust numbers as we went and make sure our venue was still OK. It became an absolute nightmare. That being said, Covid also enabled other opportunities. Because everything is now virtual or online, there’s more facility to engage and interact with people in a virtual setting, which is kind of cool.”

Health and medical science student Kimberlyn Selvan. Picture: Tricia Watkinson
Health and medical science student Kimberlyn Selvan. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

The combination of the virtual and real worlds is something Kimberlyn Selvan also had to deal with in her first year of studying a bachelor of advanced health and medical science.

A graduate of The Heights, Modbury, Selvan enjoyed a stellar first year at university, scoring distinctions and high distinctions throughout. She says there are some benefits to virtual lectures but would prefer in-class learning.

“Having lectures online, it’s just not motivating,” she says. “Because it was online, it was just being uploaded, it wasn’t live or anything. And when exam time came, there were a lot of students who just hadn’t watched the majority of the lectures.”

Selvan says two years of Covid has made her more careful when she leaves home, and she spends much of her time wearing a mask as she travels on public transport and when working at a butcher in West Lakes.

She will find out in January if her application to study medicine at James Cook University in Queensland is successful, although admits her parents are nervous at the prospect of her moving interstate at a time when the Omicron variant is gaining momentum. Selvan was also unable to attend her grandmother’s funeral in India in July because of the pandemic.

“That was pretty sad,” she says. “Most of my family lives in India. There’s only a few of us in Australia. So most people could go, but we live-streamed it.”

Horseman Toby Judd. Picture: Tricia Watkinson
Horseman Toby Judd. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

Keen horseman Toby Judd also losthis grandmother last year, and social distancing regulations restricted the number of family members able to visit her before she died.

Judd has spent the past 12 months as a pen rider at Thomas Foods’ Iranda Beef Feedlot at Tintinara but will move to northwest Queensland this month to start work as a station hand. His working life has been relatively untouched by the pandemic and he remains on track for a long career in the beef industry.

“I’ve learnt an insane amount (in the past 12 months), it’s been unreal,” he reflects. “Just the day-to-day stuff you learn at the feedlot, learning things like animal welfare and antimicrobial stewardship … just things I never thought I would have learned. It’s a dream job.”

He visited field days and demonstration farms across the state as part of his Certificate IV in agriculture technology, broke in several horses and participated in rodeos in SA and, at the start of the year, in Victoria.

“In 2020 the rodeos were almost non-existent and they’ve come back a bit in 2021,” he says. “It’s really starting to take off again now, with the borders opening … you see mates that you haven’t seen in a year or two.”

The Urrbrae Agricultural High School
old-scholar says he’s not yet ready to settle down, hence the move to Queensland, but the pandemic has put on hold his longer-term plans to check out the beef industry in North America.

Apprentice tradie Josh Vittorelli. Picture: Tricia Watkinson
Apprentice tradie Josh Vittorelli. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

Apprentice tradie Josh Vittorelli’s plans for an overseastrip are also on the back burner and restrictions on international travel might mean he buys a house before flying out of the country.

Either way, he reckons the pandemic has been good for his bank account because it’s put a major dampener on his social life.

“Honestly, it’s probably toned down the amount that I would be drinking,” he says. “I probably would have been going out every weekend – every Friday and Saturday night if Covid wasn’t a thing.

“So I’m saving a lot of money because of that and that’s been one of the best things. So now I can save for a trip, or if I want to buy a house.”

The roof plumber’s coffers have also been helped by a nationwide surge in construction, fuelled by the Covid-sparked work-from-home phenomenon, which has led to him often working six days a week just to keep up with demand.

Dr Dan Woodman is an associate professor insociology, social and political sciences at Melbourne University and part of an intergenerational study called Life Patterns, which follows the lives of young Australians from the end of their schooling through to middle age.

He says the process of finding your feet as an adult is already “longer and messier” than it was for previous generations, as young people spend more years studying and living with their parents than ever before.

Woodman says the pandemic is likely to exacerbate this trend.

“There will be more pressure to do some further education … There will be people living at home for even longer than they did beforehand,” he says. “Following from that, people are settling down later in terms of getting married and fewer people are having kids … We’ve added six years or more to when people start families in a period of about 40 years.

“Everything is just pushed out. That’s probably going to push out even further.”

Woodman says the closing of international borders has been a major blow for young adults, because travel had been one of the few life milestones to become easier for later generations. But he urged teenagers to remember that time was still on their side.

Covid Kids, standing from left, Tilly Tjala Thomas, Toby Judd, Josh Vittorelli, Kaine Baldwin and Samuel Nitschke. Seated, Awur Deng, Macie Roberts, Kimberlyn Selvan. Pictured at Botanic Park in Adelaide. Picture: Tricia Watkinson
Covid Kids, standing from left, Tilly Tjala Thomas, Toby Judd, Josh Vittorelli, Kaine Baldwin and Samuel Nitschke. Seated, Awur Deng, Macie Roberts, Kimberlyn Selvan. Pictured at Botanic Park in Adelaide. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

“This generation of young people will be able to say, ‘I did those tough years during the worst global pandemic in however many years and I got through it’,” Woodman says.

“The resilience that people have built up – that understanding of getting on with it as things are changing around you – will put them in good stead for years to come.

“And remember that things unfold over time. The flip side of things being uncertain and taking longer is that what happens this month or this year is not the end of the story.

“So take a breather if you need to and remember that life is a long-run thing. There will be plenty more opportunities to come in years to come.”

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Original URL: https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/lifestyle/sa-weekend/covid-kids-how-leaving-school-in-a-pandemic-is-affecting-teenagers/news-story/b9313020bd2679de4bf6b9d871ede9ab