A whole school year at home, digitally, not in person, wasn’t something that anyone really planned. But a two week vacation turned into a whole year of digital learning allowed me to experience something unforgettable that would stick with me throughout high school and I believe for the rest of my life.
Going to school through a computer was something I could never imagine as I received the announcement that I was going to attend my freshman year at Galileo online. School was a place where you do everything face to face so I wasn’t too sure on how I would navigate school virtually. But I eventually gave up on that thought as there wasn’t anything I could do about it but instead just riding out the summer until school started.
August 17 2019, the first day of high school went as I expected, awkward. Nobody turned on their cameras, everyone muted their mic, and it was only the teacher’s screen who was lit green. With classes predictably going to be like this for the whole year, I give props to teachers that managed to pull it off as I can only imagine talking to a wall for a solid 5-6 hours a day.
Although procrastination, lack of motivation, or just flat out being absent affected many other students during distance learning, virtual learning was actually great for me. I didn’t face any barrier with distance learning as I continued my own expectations of completing all of my school work on time.
Prior to the pandemic, getting good grades was all that I strove for. Getting a B or below was unacceptable so I had to strive for all A’s. I virtually had no free time as I had to worry about tests and once I took those, I worried about the grading period ending so I never actually had the time to explore anything outside of academics. But distance learning gave me more time than I ever had before, so I wasted no time exploring some things outside of academia.
Homework was easy and with school ending quicker than the usual schedule, I had lots of time on my hand. I started to spend lots of my time on Youtube and through Youtube, I was exposed to gaming, anime, K-dramas, C-dramas, etc. I had lots of fun exploring the various communities that I was exposed to.
When I first explored the gaming community, I quickly found out that I preferred watching the game’s lore than playing the game. I could be watching a 3 hour lore video and be fine with it after it was over than playing the game for an hour. Perhaps I prefer watching rather than playing because I usually like to watch long form content if the topic is something I’m interested in.
Anime was something I had watched very sporadically, usually based on the recommendation of friends but I would usually drop it soon after either because the plot became convoluted midway through or it was still airing and by the time I waited for it to finish airing, I was disinterested in it. But since I had lots of time on my hands, I was determined to explore more in the anime community so I watched a few anime recommendation videos and binged the ones that I found interesting. After watching quite a lot for my liking, I realized that since I binged on the ones that were good, other animes that I found didn’t quite hit the same. With more and more anime coming out every season, I would need to check every single one to find a gem which quickly tired me out.
K-dramas and C-dramas were also new to me. I knew people that watched anime but never heard people talking about K-dramas or C-dramas. I explored K-dramas first and while I did enjoy some, lots of them were filled with clique tropes like cold male protagonist, CEO male protagonist and secretary female protagonist, girlboss female protagonist, and too much predictability that I moved on to C-dramas. C-dramas like K-dramas do have the same issues but the difference is that I could watch C-dramas without needing to look at the English subtitles as much as I can understand what the majority of the actors are saying. So I end up watching more C-dramas than K-dramas with a few genres that I ended up liking.
During the pandemic, my exploration of the entertainment world and academia didn’t clash as I expected but peacefully coexist. The homework and materials were easy so I would finish all the homework given first before doing whatever I had on my list. I was tempted quite a few times on just skipping my homework and continue watching whatever I had left off, but stopped as I realized if I started that habit, it was going to be very hard to quit and who knows what my parents would do if they see that my grades dropped due to be prioritizing something else rather than academia.
After freshman year was over, we were instructed for sophomore year to return to in person learning. The day before the first day of school, I was apprehensive about returning to in person learning as after a full year of distance learning, there were bound to be some unintended repercussions from just being isolated at your home all day. Unlike what I assume though, my transition from digital to in person was a smooth one and it never felt like I had just spent a whole year isolated from everyone else.
The entertainment that I’ve built during the pandemic stuck with me even after 3 years as it’s hard to go back to completely back on focusing purely on academia. Even now reaching the end of my senior year, I managed to strike a balance between academia and entertainment by focusing on prioritizing which is more important. And if I really want to watch a season of something, I would wait to watch it on Friday night and throughout the weekend so I won’t be disturbed.
