By Christine Wu, staff writer
On August 16th, the first day of school, everyone excitedly walked into school, finally being back in person. For the first day of school, I went to school in person with everyone else. But the day after and for the following weeks, I went back doing online classes…while everyone was back in person. The reason being, my mom was very concerned about COVID especially with the Delta variant, so she signed me up for online classes. Since for a while I’ve been looking forward to going back in person, having to stay at home after my first day back in person was such a bummer. I didn’t know a single person who didn’t go back in person, it was just me.
Even though I hated the idea of how much I was missing out on, it actually wasn’t bad. Galileo was completely back in person and so the school didn’t have any options for online classes. So, I had to transfer to Independence High School because they are the only school in the district that offered online courses. Since there are a lack of teachers who were still teaching online, there was a lack of courses and classes I could take. No AP or Honors classes were offered, only normal and essential classes were offered.
The schedule and how the classes worked were very strange and different. I had 4 hours of school a week, one hour a day, and four days a week. I didn’t have school on Fridays. Also, I only had 2 classes, English and Science. How it works is that I switch subjects every 4 weeks, until I take all my required courses and my credits. You can imagine how relaxing it was compared to how online classes were during lock down and in person. Since I had so much free time, I considered getting a part-time job.
But at the end of the day, I felt like what I was doing didn’t make sense because I could totally go back in person and continue the high school experience, while being safe. Even though being online for school helped me mentally and I overall really loved how the classes went…I knew that it wasn’t really worth it. I knew that everyone else was learning so much more in person while I had one hour of class a day.
For a week, I’ve tried convincing my mom to let me go back in person. She kept declining, telling me that the pandemic was too serious. However, after weeks went by after the first day of school, the virus progressively calmed down. I told her that it was kind of ridiculous to keep me home doing online classes when the pandemic was progressively getting less severe. My friends have told me that everyone is generally safe and there’s a strict, zero-tolerance mask policy at school, keeping everyone safe. After lots of reassuring words, I eventually convinced her to put me back into in person learning.
When I finally came back to school after about a month of online classes, it was inevitable that I was pretty behind. I even lost my seat in a couple of classes, but I didn’t mind too much. Transitioning from a relaxing schedule to waking up at 6 every morning and commuting to school was very difficult because I wasn’t used to it. Going back in person is obviously a lot more work and a lot more draining. Before, I got to sleep in and even have a weekday off every week and now I’m constantly tired and overwhelmed. Even though I miss online school’s chill schedule, it’s nice being able to interact with others often again. Also, I’m overall learning a lot more and so even though I don’t really like in person learning, I know it’s a lot more worth it.
