Coronavirus Diaries: Teenagers reflect on how their lives have been upended by the Covid-19 pandemic--and what they re trying to learn from the crisis.

For weeks now, Americans have been forced to adjust to a new normal, as the coronavirus officially known as Covid-19 has ravaged communities around the globe. With hospitals overrun with patients, many states have taken the drastic step of shutting down schools and all nonessential businesses, ordering people to stay indoors as much as possible to try to halt the spread of the virus. The effect on workers has been devastating: Millions have had to file for unemployment. For many teenagers, the stress of worrying about their health and their families' well-being has been compounded by the challenge of finishing the school year online, cut off from all their classmates.

In these essays, five high school students discuss how their lives have dramatically changed during the Covid-19 pandemic and what it might mean for their futures.

Scenes from the pandemic: People wear hazmat suits while shopping for groceries in New York City (left); students of a university in Tokyo attend graduation from their homes using remote-controlled robots.

Hayley Bruner, 17 New York City * Senior at Millennium High School

I write from my seventh day of self-quarantine. For the first time in my life, New York looks dead. No cars, no honking, and no bustle. My phone lights up with a new headline about the pandemic every 20 minutes; the death toll outside my door rises.

My skin is cracking from my 17th hand sanitizer application. I haven't seen my friends in a week unless it's through a screen, and I've been wearing the same pajamas for longer than I'd like to admit. I don't know the next time I'll see my school again, but it will probably be my last.

The last months of my senior year are gone, robbed by Coronavirus. I'll be doing my schoolwork in the silence of my own home instead of being surrounded by voices I've known for almost four years. Before the virus, I remember begging for school to end. I didn't care about a prom or senior activities--they seemed like trivial obligations. And I was so ready to leave the people of my high school.

Now I don't know whether I will get a yearbook or a graduation or a prom. I'm hoping--pathetically and fearfully hoping--that I will get to walk across a stage and receive my diploma. I hope that I can dance with my best friends as my teachers linger awkwardly near the food.

When you count on something so much, you don't realize until it's gone. The class of 2020 will have to go without a real senior year and all the closure that comes with it. Will I get to clean out my locker in June? Will I get to hug people goodbye? Will I get to feel it, that promised feeling, when you close your eyes and think, I'm really done here. The answer is probably not. But I think we'll all look back on this with a sense of solidarity that we lived through these life-changing events together.

Scenes from the pandemic: Medical workers test a patient for the Coronavirus at a drive-through testing lab in Florida.

Meimei Xu, 18 Atlanta, Georgia * Senior at The Westminster Schools

Months before Covid-19 arrived in the U.S., it had already invaded my home in Atlanta.

My family immigrated to the U.S. from China when I was 3 years old, but we remain close to a large network of relatives there. Back in...