Life During Lockdown Part 3: The Grass On This Side Isn’t As Green As We Thought It Would Be

Artwork: Olivia Wang

The Grass On This Side Isn’t As Green As We Thought It Would Be

By ADELISA GUTIC (with artwork by Olivia Wang)

Back when I was waking up early to go to school every day, all I could wish for was for it to be over. And now that it is, all I want to do is go back.

When I first heard about the quarantine, I was shocked. My sister, my cousin, and I were on our weekly drive, and our friend called us and asked, “Did you hear?” Confused, we all said, “Hear what?” He told us that school had been closed until April 20th, for sure. We all sat there, in shock, because we didn’t think the virus was that serious.

At first, we were happy about the quarantine and remote learning because we thought it would be an easy way to get a our grades up if they weren’t where we wanted them, and this excited me. 

It started out pretty good. We got classwork, homework, quizzes, stuff like that, all on Google Classroom. I expected everything to be the same, just online. But then, I hit a few snags.

Now, me, I’m more of a visual learner for certain subjects, like math. So I could go over the slides from the lesson that my teacher sent us a thousand times, but I wouldn’t understand it as easily as I would if we were in school, because I just learn better when my teacher is in front of me, telling us exactly how to solve the problem on the chalkboard.

I hoped that remote learning would be an easy way to get my grades where I wanted them, but it wasn’t as easy as I thought. Some grading policies shifted, and I have more responsibilities now. For example, I never had to check my email as often when we were in school. Now, if I don't check my email multiple times a day, I feel like I’ve missed something important, and I probably have. And I never had to mark my attendance online, but if I forget to do that these days, I get marked absent for the day.

Artwork: Olivia Wang

So I started to miss school literally the week after we started remote learning, but it got worse after the first time they pushed back the date of re-opening. I started to think about how when we learned at school, we at least had our friends and peers with us, so it was fun. And then I realized that this was the longest I’d gone without seeing my friends, and I started to miss school even more.

At least once a day, I think back to the times I walked out of class and saw two of my friends waiting for me to head to lunch together. Or how, last semester, I used to do this thing where every time I walked into pre-calculus, I said “Heyyy, what’s up!” while my friend recorded me. I took all these things for granted, because now, who knows how long it might be until I see my friends again?

I find online learning hard compared to school, but that might just be me, because of the ways that I learn best. And remote learning can’t always be done in these ways, which complicates things for me.

I know that for some people, it's easier to do school from home. When I asked my brother about it, he said he didn't miss college much because the tests are easier this way. My friend Arjeta Alku ‘21, said, “I prefer online learning because I get to choose when I do the work, since it is usually due at 11:59.”

But there are lots of others like me who would rather be in school and don’t like remote learning as much. Anisa Bahcja ‘21 said, “One thing I miss a lot about school is when I had a test, I would study with people who had the same one, and we’d all do well.”

In the end, COVID-19 has brought a lot of surprises, and one of them is that doing school from home wasn’t as great as we thought it would be.

Opinions expressed reflect the views of the students and are not necessarily endorsed by the school or faculty.