By Czarinah Galve, staff writer
Coming back to in-person school after three years of virtual learning, the adjustment I found is a lot harder than when I was adjusting from in-person to online school.
Unlike most students in Galileo, I was already an online l student before the pandemic began. I had been in virtual learning since the start of my high school career. I had a bad experience at another public school and at the time it was just easier for me to go to school online.
One aspect of virtual learning is it’s easy to fall into a routine, this can be both good and bad. I got to choose when to do my assignments and even skip class without the consequences.
Yet, with these advantages also came laziness, procrastination and piles of homework that I turned in well after it was due. But I still ended up each year with a high GPA, although maybe with a worsening mental health, but it all worked out, so it was okay.
Maybe if I had been more responsible with distance learning and was more on top of it, I would have had a better experience. I can personally say the schoolwork was light and easy. Yet, as easy as it was to catch up, it was easier to fall behind, and spiral down mentally. I was deprived of human interaction and at times even felt like I was experiencing vertigo, not knowing what was real and what was not. Even though this experience was extremely difficult, I still preferred online school at the time because I knew the workload was much easier.
I asked my mom to transfer me back to in-person school my sophomore year. I thought I knew myself enough to know that coming back would be better than staying at home, but I genuinely didn’t have the motivation to sit and learn for a really long time and I ended up staying home for another year and a half because of some family stuff.
For my senior year though, I am finally in person at school. There are days where I dread waking up, going to school, talking to people, seeing my teachers, and even my friends. The popular term would be having a “dead social battery,” I’m always wanting to be home, and just completely isolate myself from the world all the time.
I feel that I’ve forgotten the expectations of being an actual student and experiencing the whole attendance, school spirit, clubs, etc. It seems as though I’m stuck in the same routine as before except I need to physically bring myself from point A to point B to get to my class or even just school itself.
I don’t hate in-person school, but I don’t love it either. I definitely feel more normal and less out of place with everyone but right now, it’s tiring. In all aspects the word for it is exhausting. I feel like being at school in person even makes my health decline.
I believe the last 3 years of online learning – the good and the bad- prepared me for this one “normal” year of high school I’m having, right now, right at this moment. But if I had a choice, or if I could make one, I’d choose virtual learning with the privilege of still being with my friends and having the same social interaction with in-person school.
