Comparing this school year to all previous school years, there have been many changes. All students and teachers started the school year online. We did Zoom classes and had all of our assignments on Schoology. Then a few months later, COVID-19 cases started going down and then students had the choice to stay online or do hybrid. During hybrid, you would go to in person school twice a week and do online school twice a week. But then COVID-19 cases went back up and all students had to learn online. Once again, a few months later, cases went down and students had the choice to go to school full time or stay online. The school year is now about to come to an end. Crazy, right? Well, that was pretty much a summary of our school year.

Let’s just talk about how big of a change this was. COVID-19 just seemed to have come out of nowhere, and then at the end of the 2019-2020 school year school shut down during spring break. We thought that our spring break was just going to be extended for another week, but we ended up staying in quarantine for months on end. We ended that school year online eventually, but we weren’t given much time to adapt to it. At the beginning of this school year, it was a lot more organized. However, almost all, if not all of us, have never done that before. Adapting and getting used to doing school online was very hard for most of us, including me. I have always preferred to do assignments on paper, but we had to do them on the computer. Now that months have passed, I’ve gotten used to almost all of it by now.

What I did like about doing school online is that we were at home. I was able to be at home with my family and do all my work in my comfortable bed rather than a hard chair at school. However, there were many distractions. As well as this, I lost a lot of motivation. Although I turned in almost all assignments on time, I did them all at the last minute. I procrastinated a lot. Once we got the choice between online school or in person school, I chose in person school right away. It’s a lot easier to get assignments done when you’re actually at school, and there are not as many distractions. It also is much easier to pay attention to the teachers.

Not to mention, MASKS! We have only had to wear masks this year at school, and it can be tiring at times. Sometimes it can be hard to understand teachers. Masks can make your face hot too. Although they can be annoying at times, I’m glad masks are a requirement because it prevents the spread of the disease if anyone has it. 

Teachers are also required to sanitize desks and chairs after every class, which is also beneficial. I feel like this should happen in any normal school year, except students clean the desks themselves. This is because many students use the same desks each day so there are a lot of germs.

Is the next school year going to be the exact same as it was this year, or maybe a little similar? Will it be the same as any previous school years? Or could it be something completely different? Now that the COVID-19 vaccine is out and is open to more people, I would imagine that masks might not be required or that there won’t be as much sanitation. More students may also come to school and stop doing school online. There also could be larger class sizes, since there are only less than 20 people in each of my classes.

Overall, I just hope that everything goes back to normal sooner than later. This doesn’t just apply to school, but it applies to the whole world. Everything that has happened during what seems like the COVID-19 era has been out of the ordinary, for me at least. Quarantining, online school, masks, I could go on. It slowly is going back to normal, but it is better than no progress at all.