Taryn Cameron, 18, is a Goulburn Valley Grammar School year 12 student who is home-schooling from her family's farm in Tallygaroopna.
Here, she shares her thoughts on how easy it is to get distracted by social media when the pressure of VCE studies are looming.
Taryn says studying from home means following the same classroom schedules, but with a few extended breaks!
She misses her friends and all the 18th birthday parties that should be happening, but tries to keep spirits up through Zoom parties and Instagram pics.
Next year she hopes to take a gap year before joining the army to study for an Australian Defence Force-sponsored arts degree.
Meanwhile, she is happy to tell us about life in lockdown at 18 years old.
Procrastination is the new pandemic
I thought I’d share my Wednesday night with you. It’s not my proudest few hours, but if anyone can relate, I hope I can provide you some comfort. We all have our days.
It began for me when, in a last-ditch effort to muster up the courage to face doing work, I thought I’d find motivation by scrolling through my Instagram feed. The idea was that I’d find a motivational quote from one of the many inspiration accounts I follow and this would spur me into action. It did not quite turn out that way.
Thirty minutes into my mindless scroll, I stumbled across the most adorable Chihuahua post telling me to ‘go vote’ for it in the cutest pet competition. Before I was even consciously aware, I had opened Safari and was beginning to type in this most adorable puppy’s individual URL to vote.
Approximately two minutes later — yes, that’s how long it took me to accurately type out the 15 numbers of this URL — I entered the puppy’s website profile. At this stage, I’m thinking "Taryn, you are in year 12, it is 10 pm and you haven’t even touched the books and now you’re voting for a dog you saw on Instagram!" But my mind warps logic to suit its narrative: "But Taryn, you’ve just spent a valuable two minutes typing out this extremely long URL and look — the puppy’s eyes are pleading with you to vote." All right, all right, time is suddenly of the essence. I’ve got two projects to do tonight and I’ve only had the past five hours to do them, but now: it’s time.
I go to click ‘vote’, and blimey, I have to create an account as well! After typing out my ridiculously long email address, creating a password, logging into my emails, clicking the code to verify and then finally re-entering the website, I voted for the cute Chihuahua. Amen. Time to get started on those two projects. But first, I must check those emails because, you know, I may have to reply to an email that’s somehow more pressing than my projects — at what is now 10:45 pm.
Well, the downward spiral just took an even steeper turn.
There, sitting in my inbox, was a message from a watch brand informing me that my Instagram feed had caught their attention and that they had given me a code for a free watch to post a pic in and advertise for them. Wow, I thought, maybe this could be start of something! How naïve.
After browsing through several collections of watches, compiling a shortlist, and then liaising with my sisters in a group chat (by the way, my parents would faint if they knew we were all secretly on our phones at this hour!) it was decided that the rose gold watch was the winner.
I typed out all my details: first and last names, address, phone number, email, and finally ‘activate code’. Well, blow me down! I would still have to pay an insane amount for international shipping in some foreign currency that I couldn’t even recognise. I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book.
After this ordeal, I was in no fit state to study. Clicking back on my Instagram, I began treating myself to what I call scrolling therapy. My plans for a productive night of work well and truly in tatters.
By Taryn Cameron