You're what Piers Morgan would call a snowflake.
Oh my God! Did you just say that I'm a snowflake?
Didn't you say he was like one of your favourite people in the last video?
I did not say that!
I did a call-out.
Pretty sure he retweeted you.
I know that me being annoyed that you called me snowflake
makes me look like a snowflake but it's different because you're my sister.
In this week's episode of A New Normal, I'm gonna be speaking to young people
and that's because in a lot of the news cycle we have looked at how coronavirus
is disproportionately affecting older people but when you look at the younger
generations it is them who are going to have to foot the bill for everything
that's going on at the moment and they are also going out into a more kind of
precarious job market.
So there's a lot going on, a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear
and so I felt I could be really important to speak to people about how they're handling things
day to day.
These are some of the responses from the call-out that we did online
from people who are under the age of 24.
Some people I know just can't deal with the stress.
There are four people that I've decided to speak to
as part of this video.
I've got some good news.
Yeah.
Gogglebox is coming back.
My sister is in her final year of University.
She's at University in London and she's graduating this year.
She's really disrespectful, she's really rude.
You need to be OK with the idea that life will be really bad at times
kind of like it is now to some extent.
Connor is at university in Edinburgh and he is in his final year and should be
leaving to go and do masters but he is looking at joining a charity and working
in the mental health sector.
I'll be honest that my initial reaction was, wow
I don't have exams, I was celebrating.
Debra is in South London,
she is in her final year of sixth form and had planned to take a gap year this year
to work and travel but with everything that's going on she has decided to take
the plunge and go straight into education in September.
I should be revising right now, it's half time right now.
So I should be literally revising right now for my exam on the second but ...
Ronnie is the son of a local pharmacist
and has been working alongside his mum helping her out some of the days
during the lockdown and he's in his final year sixth form and wants to go on
to be a doctor.
Everything happened so quickly that we had like a leavers assembly the day after it was announced.
All of a sudden school was cancelled, exams were canceled and I have nothing to do for next six months.
Although our teachers part in rank order of who they think that's
going to get an A and who's going to get B is up to statisticians in an office
somewhere to put us on a bell curve and be like yeah that kid gets moved on to a B.
That's just how it is.
It won't be fair for a lot of people basically.
I crumble under pressure so like, exam season isn't my season.
I hate exams.
When I first found out that I wouldn't have to sit exams ...
'That's the best thing ever' and then I sat down I was like, no but I haven't had
enough time to prove that I am capable of getting in those grades.
With your A levels is the deal at the moment that your predicted
grades are what you're going to get or is it that your teachers can get involved ... ?
How is that?
Our teachers have messaged us being like, it's a mixture of your
predicted grades, your mocks and what work you've submitted to your teachers.
If you are the person that waits until the last minute, you're screwed because
that means you've gone through all your mocks, not really revising, getting bad grades
and that's what your grades are going to be based on.
The way it's structured as well is like that the mocks don't matter,
in terms of, you were told
this is just a practice.
Literally.
So, you know, people aren't coming with the same kind of attitude as they would if it was the real deal.
People forget what it's like being a young person and actually ...
You know what I mean?
We were told three weeks after lockdown,
there will be exams for anyone who's not a first-year student.
We don't know what those exams will look like, what length they need to be, what content will
be in them, how the questions will be formatted ...
It is what is and everyone's in the same situation so you have to approach it pragmatically
like it's just going to be what it is.
But at the same time, then you're like, wow
it's like seeing a tidal wave come towards you and you're like, cool.
'I wanted to say to you how sorry I am that you've been disrupted,
you've had your education disrupted in this way.'
One of the things that is really, really stressful about all of this is that
exams put an insane amount of pressure on young people but having those exams taken away,
takes away the opportunity for young people to perform and show that they are capable
of taking control of situations and going on to the next step and it is,
you know, a recurring thing that people talk about, you know, that stress of not being
able to be in control of your own life and that is something that we haven't
been able to focus on properly and it is definitely important that we decide how
we're going to put things together moving forward so that people can have a
sense of ownership over their own lives.
When you responded to the call-out, you specifically spoke about, you know, your own personal struggles
going through lockdown.
Would you be able to kind of describe that a bit and how that's kind
of affected you?
Yeah, yeah. To just put a long story short, I got to a point where I was very, very obsessed
about all food and exercise to the point where I was restricting all day, trying to eat as little as I could but
then when you get to a point where you're trying to eat a little as you can,
your brain or your mind isn't able to focus on anything else other than food.
It's like eating to the point you're uncomfortable and in pain, physically in pain.
So I went to a therapist and about after 6 or 7 sessions of therapy, I came out of it
and I like opened up, I can't say I'm like fully recovered but then
when a lockdown happened and all the different changes with how you can
exercise, you can't go out as much and the sudden focus on buying food and
make sure your food doesn't run out,
that brought like a lot of feelings for me thinking, like, if I don't exercise enough now,
will I start gaining weight or should I start like, putting down my calories again
because I'm not gonna be walking around as much so I'm not gonna burn much calories and I
might get fat whatever ... it's like ...
I consider myself on the far end of recovered then thoughts are still coming back.
It would have been negligible anyway that it's not an issue,
and even if it did, it's not an issue, like, but for what I experienced with what I went through,
it very much felt like an issue.
And I was on the far end of recovered.
I really feel for the people who are just starting this whole journey or haven't even got
help yet and then they are in this sort of environment.
Can we just see one particular group that are being particularly damaged by the economy and
that's young people, there's no doubt they are bearing the brunt in terms of
job insecurity, job losses,
the effect on their lifestyles and living standards.
Even before coronavirus, things were not perfect.
There was a lot of debate about how much university costs, there was a lot of debate about
the mental health impact that higher education was having on young people and
the lack of provisions available to them and so these are areas which are even
more intensely important to discuss looking forward.
Are young people still going to have to pay £9,000 a year
for education which will mostly be online?
Are people going to have a degree which means that they are more
employable or not?
And how are we going to value people and put young people in a position
where they can be employed and have purpose in life moving forwards?
Even the people I knew who graduated last year or the year before who've got jobs,
they were the first ones to get furloughed and to be made redundant and
I think that's the case for a lot of people my age and the question is,
now, what does our degree mean?
We paid £9,250 a year
to go to university, to pay for a degree that's supposedly going to help
us get jobs later down the line.
But now there's a surplus of people with degrees
in an economy that is not generating the jobs.
So what's gotta give?
And it has to be something.
If we've gone into this and that's how we are treated as consumers
who are buying a good for a degree, how is this going to move forward?
And I think that's a big question for a lot of people.
What has been the hardest thing about lockdown?
I think the hardest thing was closing the chapter
of like, secondary school years or, like, six whole years.
I don't get to graduate, I don't get to like, say thank you or show appreciation to people in real life.
I think that's been the hardest thing not being able to close a chapter fully
and go through the traditional steps of leaving sixth form and transitioning to uni.
Reading the things that people have sent in and having these conversations
I've had with people, I do feel positive about the young people who are coming up who
are so smart, so articulate, so kind of switched on and yes, there's an honesty
and like a fear and no one has the right answers but it is about having an open
conversation and saying how do you prioritise your values?
What is it that you think matters?
For you personally, when you look at the future,
what are you thinking?
You look online and it seems like people are becoming more aware of the sort of
mental health and maybe the problems they've had going on for quite a while
and now they have the chance to with them and not have many of the responsibilities ...
They can sort it out to realise what they do need to address,
what they need to do to sort it out.
I hope that if we can take anything away from the pandemic,
it's from valuing people who should be valued like people who work in the NHS,
nurses, people who help other people in society, not just people who serve themselves.
I think unknown is quite nice, I quite like not knowing what the
future holds is quite nice because I think we're always trying to
affect everything and for me it was like, I need to go to uni by this age,
I need to finish by this age, I want to have a house at this age ...
It's like I've taken time and I was like, OK, no, my plans can change,
like things can change constantly.
We just have to be willing to adjust to it.
You want to go into medical profession, you want to be a doctor
and then looking at the situation now, has that changed the way you feel about it?
It's kind of nice seeing the appreciation change and how people are, like, fully understanding
the length and the risks doctors ...
For just normal people who walk into GP surgery, they don't care about your background or
anything but people are genuinely ... it's nice to see everyone clapping.
And as much as I can say, as someone with no vision into the future, think you'll be alright
I appreciate it.
I'm happy for myself, I feel like
I'm in a good place right now and I also know that I might not be in a good place
in the future and all that is OK so I think when you're aware of
different things it's not as detrimental and it's not as like feeling at the end
of the world.
Do you know what?
We as a human race have survived so much I feel like this is just another event.
People aren't just gonna lie-down and take it, do you know what I mean?
The world keeps spinning.
You have to keep moving because what's the alternative?
If you are feeling really stressed and you need somebody to talk to,
there are links in the description box below.
Please, please, don't be suffering in silence at home, you are not alone, you're not the only
person going through this and things are going to have to change,
they are not going to stay like this.
There are going to be opportunities that will open up in the future.
I personally, having spoken to the young people I spoken to, do feel more positive
than I did before making this video about the future
because I know that there is so much positivity, there are so many smart young people
and that moving forwards, there is hope.
Love you!
Are you going to say it back?
I feel like there's a lot of pressure.
Feel like the world's watching.