COVID-19: School-leavers, the pandemic and the path into adulthood
Their final year of school combined with a global pandemic created a defining experience for the Class of 2020. So, how will COVID-19 affect their future?
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Awur Deng is a high achiever by anyone’s standards.
Last year’s Parafield Gardens school captain set her sights on becoming a lawyer when she was eight, after she learned about the deeds of anti-discrimination champions Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks.
She has worked tirelessly towards that goal for the past decade – starting a debating team at school, participating in youth parliament and returning an ATAR of 96.5 last year. Oh, she’s also one of 10 siblings living in her parents’ Salisbury Plain home and juggled her Year 12 studies with up to 30 hours a week work at McDonald’s.
She’s the type of teenager who gives the impression that the world is her oyster. She has a long-term plan to be Australia’s foreign minister and it’s hard to imagine she won’t go on to achieve great things.
But there were times, when SA was in the middle of COVID-enforced lockdowns last year, that it all became too much. She was ready to give up on 2020 and had resigned herself to being forced to complete Year 12 in 2021.
“I wasn’t able to focus and I was constantly worrying about what tomorrow would bring,” Deng says. “Students from my school were turning to me in their time of need, which was a lot to handle and did impact my mental health. I did find myself in a mood of ‘who cares?’, which was hard to get out of.”
But a few months down the track Deng, like many of her contemporaries, says surviving the experience of pandemic-ridden 2020 will ultimately hold her in good stead. “I believe I have come out of this crazy experience with more love, compassion and determination,” she says. “I overcame this obstacle … I can achieve anything.”
Deng is a member of a generation SA-Weekend has dubbed the COVID Kids. They’re the school leavers about to embark on adulthood after living through the most tumultuous year in living memory.
Their final 12 months of schooling was marred by lockdowns and constant change. Year 12 formals, graduation ceremonies and valedictories were cancelled or severely stripped back. They spent weeks learning from home, without instant access to many of their teachers. For a while, during the early stages of COVID, they weren’t even sure they would be able to sit their exams.
End-of-year Schoolies celebrations were cancelled. Gap-year travel is off the agenda. Jobs, even part-time, will become harder to come by in an increasingly crowded field. And they’re entering a world still in the grip of a pandemic and facing an era of economic uncertainty not seen for a generation.
It’s a cohort which will be forever connected for having survived what was always going to be the most stressful year of their school lives during a period of unprecedented global upheaval.
They’ve lived a unique experience and the road ahead is just as uncertain as the one they have just travelled.
With that in mind, SAWeekend today introduces nine school leavers with a range of experiences and aspirations as they enter the adult world.
Our plan is to touch base with these young adults over the next few years and follow their life journeys in an attempt to unpack the long-term impact of 2020.
History suggests this generation of school leavers is likely to suffer what economists and sociologists call a “scarring effect” – whereby the impact of leaving school during an economic downturn continues to make its mark 10 years later.
But Dr Dan Woodman, Associate Professor in Sociology, Social and Political Sciences at Melbourne University, hopes the COVID generation also possesses a more positive attribute which could work in their favour.
“What I’m wondering about, or hoping, is that they’ll be marked out with a positive stamp next to their name forever because people will think, ‘Well, you know, this is a resilient group’,” he says. “I teach first-year university and when the new cohort comes in this year, I’ll probably start the class by giving them a metaphorical pat on the back and say well done for making it. What a year to get through.
“The transition from Year 12 to getting yourself sorted in the labour market and building a career was already messier and tougher than it used to be. And now these guys have got a little bit of a tougher time, even compared with the young people who did it just before them, because we’ve got a recession, and it’s going to take a while to bounce back.
“But the flip side of that is that people like me, and maybe future employers, will almost see it as like a gold star of resilience next to their name, because they did it, they made it through.”
Resilience. It’s a word which keeps popping up as SAWeekend’s COVID Kids case studies reflect on their experiences of last year, and the next stage.
It’s a characteristic talented AFL aspirant Kaine Baldwin, 18, has displayed in spades after being struck down with two knee reconstructions in 18 months.
Touted as a potential top 10 draft pick since captaining SA to a national under-16 title in 2018, Baldwin was disappointed when AFL clubs overlooked him last year. But he remains resolved to fulfil his AFL dream and will combine study with football on the Gold Coast in 2021 after receiving an ATAR of 95.8 and winning a scholarship at Bond University to study a Bachelor of Health Science degree and a spot on the Suns’ Academy squad.
The state’s initial COVID lockdown in March and April last year was actually a blessing in disguise for Baldwin. It pushed back the start of the SANFL season, giving him extra time to recover from his first knee operation.
But the same knee buckled again during an internal trial game for Glenelg, forcing him back to the operating table. So he spent last year concentrating on his rehab, his studies and his role as Westminster College captain.
He’s full of praise for the way his school handled the lockdown and says he starts 2021 knowing that if could handle 2020, he can handle anything.
“After the challenges I faced and having the school captaincy as well, I always think about that and think, ‘Where would I be, if not for this?’,” he says.
“I’ve said this a few times, even on my Bond application, that I thought my injuries especially have been the best thing that ever happened to me because it’s helped me learn about myself and how much damage I can actually put up with.”
The 2020 COVID lockdowns also had a silver lining for aspiring Riverland astronaut Samuel Nitschke, 17, of Loxton.
Nitschke, among the highest performing students in the state with an ATAR of 99.75, says the cancellation of sporting, social and extra-curricular events meant there was little else to do but study in 2020. His class actually finished its maths methods course three weeks early.
“In a strange way, COVID kind of helped, which I don’t think many people can say, so I’m incredibly lucky and I’m not going to forget that anytime soon,” he says.
“COVID basically forces you to develop an ability to react to change almost instantaneously – because what you are able to do is changing, minute by minute.
“Being able to react quickly, think quickly and apply yourself in any scenario – it’s forced you to develop those skills. And resilience is definitely a big part of that.
“Because Year 12 is definitely not easy, and you look forward to those social and sporting events. Having those cancelled can put a dampener on the year but powering through that and focusing on your study – that’s where COVID forces you to develop resilience and perseverance.”
Nitschke, who grew up gazing at the stars and dreaming of a career in the space industry, remains optimistic about the future of a sector booming both in SA, nationally and around the world.
Emerging Indigenous singer-songwriter Tilly Tjala Thomas, 18, is already on the way to becoming a star in her own right. Two of her songs are on rotation and attracting rave reviews on Triple J.
She started busking at the Willunga Farmers’ Market when she was 11. This soon morphed into paid gigs but they dried up last year when COVID struck.
But the enforced break from live performances gave her time to direct her energy towards writing and producing her own songs.
“When we were in lockdown I would be inspired to song write and do stuff with my music,” she says. “I think if I was doing gigs throughout the year it would have been really stressful for me. So, in a way, it was actually a beneficial thing for me.”
But COVID did throw up its challenges. The state’s hard lockdown in November came just as she and her classmates at Willunga Waldorf School were scheduled to deliver on stage the Year 12 project they had been working on for 10 months. Those presentations were delivered online, a scenario Thomas describes as leaving her class “pretty devastated”.
“I’m still so proud for every Year 12 student who was able to get through the year,” she says. “It was such a tough year and just building up that resilience and being able to adapt to those situations was a really hard thing, but also quite an amazing thing that a lot of people were able to achieve that as well.”
COVID-enforced border closures forced Toby Judd, 17, to shelve plans to compete in bull riding competitions at rodeos in Queensland and NSW, but never veered from his goal of obtaining a job in the beef industry.
Judd will start work as a pen rider at Thomas Foods’ Iranda Beef feedlot at Tintinara next week, realising a lifelong dream to make a career out of working with animals – especially horses.
The Urrbrae Agricultural College graduate took a break from training one of his horses on his parents’ Bradbury property to speak with SAWeekend and will have two of his favourite steeds with him when he starts work on Monday.
He achieved his South Australian Certificate of Education by combining a Certificate III in Agriculture with Year 11 studies last year, and plans to combine work with further agricultural study in the next few years. The shearing business which he started a couple of years ago will take a back seat but the time management skills he learnt juggling shearing with school are sure to pay dividends.
“Pretty well from the day I was born I knew I was going to be involved in agriculture in some perspective,” he says. “The main effect of COVID for me was pursuing my sport, really. If that had gone ahead then I may have continued that for a couple more years. I still hope to do the odd rodeo and odd bull ride but I’ve had to settle down, I guess, pretty early on and get a stable job, which I’m really happy with.”
Josh Vitorelli, 18, also enters 2021 with a full-time job. He started an apprenticeship with Old Port Roofing after finishing his schooling last year. There were times early in COVID when he wondered if he would be able to complete Year 12.
“My motivation with online schooling was a little bit … a little bit off,” he says. “I was starting to worry a bit but luckily they said we’d be coming back to school in two weeks and I was like ‘OK, I might be able to do it’.”
The former Gleeson College student says he had always wanted to become a tradesman, but COVID probably narrowed down his options because of a lack of work experience opportunities. “I had wanted to try out a couple more things before I went into an apprenticeship,” he says. “Who knows, I could have liked them better than what I’m doing now, but I’m liking it now, so I’m OK with it.”
Work colleagues have told Vitorelli business has boomed during COVID, possibly from the work-from-home phenomenon, and he’s excited about the year ahead.
Kimberlyn Selvan, 17, has had her heart set on a career in medicine since she was a young child when her grandmother underwent heart bypass surgery. Her family moved from India to Australia when she was in Year 8 and a passion for science strengthened her resolve to one day become a doctor.
COVID ruined her hopes of volunteering at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute last year and she says the disruptions to her studies played at least a small role in a lower-than-hoped-for ATAR.
“What COVID has taught me is to always be prepared,” she says. “Because with going into lockdown I don’t think I had the mindset that I was ready for it, which is what made it hard, later on, to study. Year 12, as it is, was a very difficult year for me, and COVID just added to that.”
Madeline Ryan, 18, had combined study with a part-time job at Coles for three years and had booked flights and accommodation for a holiday in England and Europe to celebrate her Year 12 graduation.
From early on in the COVID experience it became obvious those plans would have to change, so she re-booked for New Zealand when it looked like a trans-Tasman bubble might be on the cards.
But after her Kiwi trip also fell through, she threw herself into work at both Coles and at Trinity College’s Out of School Hours Care centre while waiting to start studying a Bachelor of Secondary Education degree at the University of SA’s Mawson Lakes campus this year.
She is considering pushing back her overseas travel plans until after she finishes university – by which stage strict COVID border restrictions are hopefully a thing of the past.
“I think the biggest thing (during COVID) was probably the social side of things,” Ryan says.
“Things like not being able to have your last sports day and having a school formal that was good, but wasn’t great, because of all the restrictions.”
Macie Roberts took up dancing as a five-year-old and has long had her heart set on turning her passion into a profession. COVID threw a minor spanner into those plans early last year when she was unable to audition in person for a position at Tweed Heads studio Dance Force.
But her application video was enough to convince the Dance Force hierarchy of her talent and she will move to the far northern NSW coastal city next weekend to begin studying a Certificate IV in Performing Arts (Dance).
The endgame is a job as a professional dancer, possibly on a cruise ship, stage production or in a theme park but she knows she’s entering an industry hard-hit by COVID.
“Everyone who was working or had contracts is being sent home,” she says. “There are heaps of people I know who are meant to be working but are back in Adelaide who were meant to be on cruise ships. So they are also going to be trying to get jobs when I’m trying to get contracts as well.”
But she’s determined to proceed with her plans, vowing to work hard in the next 12 months in an effort to push herself to the front of the pack.
It’s an attitude Roberts and her peers will need to embrace if they want to succeed in a post-COVID world likely to throw up many more challenges as governments and industry work to rebuild an economy which has been crippled in several sectors.
Sociologists like Woodman say it’s crucial that society and employers can provide the COVID Kids with a hope that things are on the improve.
“Whenever there’s a downturn, it can be tough for people who aren’t in the workforce yet to get their start,” he says. “Even if things are tough, though, if things feel like you’re going somewhere, that things are going to get better, then people tend to do well – even through the hurdles that they may come up against.
“If we build an economy that gives people that sense, then I think they’ll be well-prepared to be pretty resilient even if there are some bumps along the way.”
Associate Professor Dr Lydia Woodyatt from Flinders University agrees that hope and optimism will be a key factor in protecting the mental health of young adults post-COVID, but says school-leavers have a chance to make their unique tale of resilience a defining aspect of their identity.
“If this can become a positive part of their identity, then it’s a good thing,” she says. “Every difficulty that we go through, if we get through it successfully, then that enables us to feel like ‘OK, I do have self-efficacy. I can be effective in managing talent’ and that’s a great thing.
“And with the layers of support they’ve got around them, with better mental health awareness, I think there’s good opportunities there. But that’s not to say every kid will be in that situation.”
Woodyatt urges potential employers to stay connected with their young workers and says parents should try to understand the factors driving mental health to know what their children are going through.
And her advice to the COVID Kids themselves? “The world is full of future possibilities. There’s lots of reasons to be hopeful. We live in a world where there’s lots of challenges ahead but we need people who are willing to step up and tackle these.
“The world’s been through difficulties before and after each of those difficulties, there are generations that have done amazing things. Any difficulties we go through – that doesn’t dictate our future.”
Woodman has a similar message to the 15,000-plus students who completed their South Australian Certificate of Education last year and enter the adult world in 2021.
“Well done, give yourself a pat on the back,” he says. “You’ve been flexible, you’ve dealt with uncertainty and those are two of the main attributes that are going to prepare you really well for future work and life. You’ve got that great foundation, so take it with you and build on it. That adaptability is going to put you in a good position to make those next steps.”
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