For approximately a year and a half, my life has been at a standstill. Up until the beginning of the official back-on-campus learning in August, I never fully absorbed the extent to which COVID-19 had pressed the pause button on my social, physical, and mental life. While the feeling of being back on physical school grounds is both nostalgic and exciting, other feelings of shock and anxiety are more prevalent for me personally, both mentally and academically.
In more ways than one, the transition from online learning back to on-campus learning has been completely and utterly terrifying. As an immunocompromised Type 1 diabetic, one of the main concerns my parents and I shared before the start of the school year was the large number of people who would soon be surrounding me daily, with or without proper facial coverings or vaccinations. The latter is obviously not preferable; however, prevention of such a widespread and contagious virus is nearly impossible at a school that is now severely beyond its capacity limitations, even more so than in previous years.
As much as I would like to say that with several procedures and policies set in place I feel safe at school with my mask and mini sanitizer bottle, that expectation is nowhere near my reality as a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student. The absurd policies (e.g., no requirement for vaccinated students to quarantine for any period of time so long as they remain asymptomatic) leave the teachers, staff, and student body essentially helpless, merely waiting for the next shift back to online learning due to an outbreak in cases spread from “asymptomatic” students.
Aside from the “safety measures” that are not nearly enforced enough by the school and the district, the sudden transition from E-learning to in-person learning has raised other implications for me as a student, such as extremely underdeveloped social confidence and difficulty handling my workload.
While stuck in my home for several months, the deprivation of any social interaction aside from seeing my family came as a massive shock to my usual “social butterfly” routine. Although, after a few more of these tedious months, this new habit of sitting at home on my computer all day became the new norm. This change led to a massive decline in my extrovertive personality and interest in forming new friendships with my classmates.
Reflecting back on the beginning of my sophomore year, I can remember the nervous yet exciting feeling of meeting new teachers, classmates, and administrators. Now as a senior, I find it challenging and uninteresting to spark up small talk with my lab partner in anatomy or ask questions in math class. These underlying negative effects of COVID-19 and E-learning over the past year and a half have made my case of “senioritis” turn from bad to worse.
Additionally, last year’s E-learning approach has completely destroyed both my and other students’ work ethic and efforts. If we are being honest, the online learning model has certainly led to more accessibility to the internet during tests, assignments, and other school work. Now, back in a classroom setting, students find themselves needing to drastically change their apathetic attitudes in order to move past these previous at-home crutches.
As a section editor for the Eagle Eye newspaper and the president of my school’s National Art Honor Society, I find that although lots of school activities and events could be conducted or organized better, not all aspects of being back on campus are entirely unenthusiastic or disappointing. Unlike most things, clubs and organizations are one of the aspects about campus that I have missed most since my overly drawn-out spring break a year and a half ago. It is a comforting feeling to know that even in times of a global pandemic and problematic school district policies, there are at least two places on campus that I can feel at home.
While I am grateful to be able to spend my last year of high school finally back on campus for the first time since March 2020, I am severely disappointed in the effort of the student body and the “enforcement” by the security officers who cannot even wear a mask above their noses themselves. Thus far, the transition from online to on-campus learning has been below my expectations. However, after a year and a half of isolation and solitude, social anxiety is the lesser of two evils. As a collective, the people who attend this school, whether a teacher or a student, need to do better if they wish to finish out the school year with as much normalcy as possible.