It’s funny and ironic how so many people thought that 2020 was going to be their “Best year yet.” But these musings will dwell less on how Covid-19 affected my personal life, and more my daily life in school.  The changes first came in the last 9 weeks of our 2019-2020 school year.  First with the extended spring break (which was a delight to hear); then came online classes. The concept sounded cool on paper. I get to go to school in my pajamas, lay down in bed, eat whatever breakfast I wanted, it sounded like the dream! And it was, for about a week. 

I did not realize how much of a hell online schooling was going to be until I had to take responsibility of creating my own schedule. It did not sound difficult at first. Just wake up, do the work, finish school, and then go play some games. Simple, right? I do not mean to discredit the teachers who stay up sleepless nights to get these lessons planned, but I found more entertainment staring at a brick wall than these lectures. It was not their fault either, it was just the nature of the game.  

And the fact that Teams was not working 70% of the time did not help either. Even after summer, the classes were facing bugs, unresponsive students, and trolls. Especially trolls. It came to the point where a class had to be dismissed entirely because of one! I experienced this firsthand in Mrs. Mathis’s class. It bummed me out because it was good lesson, too!  

After a while of doing the same monotonous thing for the past month post-summer break, I started skipping some of my math lectures because I would find the exact same topic on YouTube… just more refined and polished…though, I do not recommend doing this in hindsight since I missed many assignments. 

Skipping class aside, another reason that made online classes such a chore was simply the sluggish nature of the whole process. Whoever decided that it was a clever idea to implement a live chat feature in Teams lessons should be fired! This is my main grievance. The chatting feature is horrendous! It stops all progress of the topic because teachers must wait sometimes minutes for students to finish typing their answer that could have been easily carried out in 10 seconds had they used their voice.  It’s the main reason why I left online class in favor for face to face.

I have never really appreciated face to face classes until I left online schooling. I can the immediate difference between the teacher’s attitudes. Whenever I took online classes, the teachers looked miserable. They clearly weren’t suited for this style of teaching. But those same teachers that I was online with, had totally shifted their personalities when I saw them face to face. They seem to be motivated to teach and had more entertaining lessons. Though wearing masks to school did get frustrating at times, I will never go back to online schooling. Hopefully!