High school brings so many opportunities and challenges to all of our lives, but this year we are facing some new ones. Everyone has their own opinions on remote learning, but at the end of the day, teachers are trying their best to help students learn and reach their full potential.
My senior year just started and I’m happy to say, it has been great. When talking to my other friends, some seem to hate online school and others seem to love it. In all honesty, I love online school. This new schedule has given me much more time to work on myself and find true happiness. Last year, remote learning felt as if it was rushed and ill-prepared. It seemed to be optional and there was not much of a drive to have a structure with our new lives and norms.
With a more than full summer of nice weather and uncertainty, I was confused and had very low expectations for the start of the school year, but I was delighted how everything seemed to work so smoothly (except for the zoom calls). Other than the minor electronic errors, I enjoyed the added structure and the feeling of actually having school every day. I took this not as an obstacle to try and fit into my everyday life, but rather I took it as a challenge to warp my “very busy” life around this new schedule. I have not had a schedule change since middle school so it is weird to start out with a different structure and a different format to work into my brain.
I was really bummed out when I realized there was going to be no glamorous senior year like I had imagined. Instead, I was stuck at my house being forced to do homework over online lectures that only interested me every blue moon. Soon I was starting to envision this not as a window of what this year could have been, but instead a door that was able to show me that sometimes solidarity is nice. I had no idea that this is how I would be living my life. Last year I feel like all I did was go to school and hang out with friends, in the offseason of course, but now I find myself taking lots of time out of my day for no one else but me.
With all of this added free time, I have started to enjoy being far from home and far from any daily routine. Also, I have started exploring nature a lot more and spending more time away from the pressures of society. Some things I have picked up are hiking, fishing, backpacking, etc. These activities seem to make me feel somewhat freed from everything and they help me clear my foggy thoughts. I feel as if I have grown more since I started venturing out from my normal everyday life: exploring something new and being able to be surrounded by nature is what has been getting me through these quarantine blues. These activities have been able to keep me from being up in the clouds all the time and make school easier. If I could refer any message from me to you, the reader. Go outside.
