The future's still bright but home school due to coronavirus is tough in your final year

Postcards from the pandemic is a new series that looks at how everyday Australians are coping with immense changes coronavirus has brought to their lives.

Zoe Latimore’s history teacher suggested her students keep a diary. The idea had circulated in an online message and urged students to get a hard-copy journal and a pen.

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“Don’t waste time with digital writing as a century from now, the people of that time won’t be able to read the outdated electronic files,” the message said. Donate your journal to the library when this is over, and in a couple of generations, “social historians will explode in delight” as they unearth evidence of the impact of Covid-19 on today’s youth.

In her small bedroom, with a bass guitar in the corner and a rumpled dog bed on the floor, Zoe writes down her thoughts. To be young through such extraordinary times throws up its own challenges, its own perspective on history.

Diary, January 2020: Social media has taken to making memes and jokes about the issue. It’s funny, sure, but it’s a coping mechanism. We as a society are too afraid to be faced with something that might possibly be worse than Sars and has the capacity to kill people.

Zoe is 17, a year 12 student at Williamstown high school in Melbourne’s west, which is normally thronging with 1,500 students, sport, music, the scraping of chairs, the intensity of friendship.

Victoria’s term holidays were brought forward and the state is in virtual lockdown, with public gatherings of more than two people apart from household members banned. Other states have similar rules: in NSW, schools are open, but parents have been advised to keep children at home if possible. In Queensland, schools are open only for essential workers until term break this week.

Zoe is officially on holidays, but “there’s a lot of pressure in year 12”, so she’s trying to do schoolwork to keep up and to get ready if term two is held entirely online. She’s exercising each day, setting herself a plank challenge. She takes her dog, Cobie, out for a walk. Usually on holidays, she would go over to friends’ houses; now, they catch up on video calls.

Zoe is quietly spoken and reflective, but she worries about school. “I’m diagnosed with a few disorders or learning disabilities and one of the symptoms is difficulty focusing. I have problems paying attention in class as it is, with the teacher.”

If school remains closed, she will need to study without the structure it provides. “I’m worried that I won’t be able to learn the content quite as well [and] how badly that will affect my grades.”

Diary, February 2020: In class, I was accused (by a boy) of having the coronavirus because not only did I have a coughing fit from choking on water I was drinking, but because I am of Asian ethnicity. I had never directly experienced such racist remarks … I awkwardly laughed, trying to play it off by giving a dry response to him. “Aha, yeah sure.”

Zoe is in the army cadets, and she calls it her second family. She loves the camps, learning radio communication, camouflage and first aid. For work experience, she went to a physiotherapy clinic and decided that’s what she wanted to study after school. The plan is to take a gap year and join the defence force, then study physiotherapy with support from the army.

Family life goes on around her. Both her parents still have jobs and are working from home. Mother Carolyn Wong, 43, sets up outside with a laptop and phone, working as a training manager for Toyota. Father David Latimore, 42, is at a desk inside, doing his job as a maintenance manager for BP service stations. Then there’s Jack, 2, normally in childcare, now at home.

Before it closed, Williamstown High had already begun to prepare for off-campus learning. Students were told to take all their books home each night, just in case there was a sudden lockdown.

School athletics day was cancelled, then excursions and camps. Posters in the toilets explained how to wash your hands. Zoe was pleased school closed early, because it was impossible to keep a safe distance from people. School was “one of the best places to spread the virus because there’s just so many people clustered in one area”.

Diary, early March 2020: In English class, we are reading a novel called Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel and the similarities are frightening. The novel is set in post-apocalyptic times and is about a deadly virus that wipes out more than half the world’s population and how, years later, civilisation is so contrastingly different. It’s almost as if Mandel’s novel was predicting the future.

Zoe understands how serious coronavirus is, but she sees some unexpected positives. There’s a bit of cabin fever, she says, but she likes the extended time with her parents and brother. “We haven’t quite had a time before where we were all together in the same room for this long. We’ve got this family bonding.”

She watches global news and has seen the environment taking a breather – in China and Italy, the air is cleaner. The water in Venice’s canals, usually filthy, is clearer. Global carbon emissions are down. Like many of her generation, Zoe is passionate about climate change.

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“It’s a bit controversial of me to think, but us humans being in isolation and locked down, it’s doing the earth and environment some good. There aren’t as many people out in the streets, there’s less pollution.”

Diary, 24 March 2020: One of my concerns is how will I be able to find the motivation to get out of bed and buckle down to do homework? How will I be able to learn? I already have difficulty paying attention as it is in school … I have so many distractions at home … which worries me because year 12 is the big year, everything counts leading towards my exams.

• We’d like to hear your story about how you are managing during this crisis. Email: postcards@theguardian.com