Online School and Physical School: How did it affect our students?
After being stuck in eight long months of dreary quarantine and online school, students finally get to step foot into our dearly missed school campus. As many have said, it takes a long time to form a habit and a short time to break a habit. Students have already gotten used to the routine of waking up whenever they can and sitting in front the luminescent computer screen for hours. The only type of interactions with other people besides family were laggy and awkward Zoom calls.
Kids in class Image courtesy of amazonnaws.com
After eight months of long waiting, students are finally able to return to campus for school. This made many students excited and was one of the only things they looked forward to. Of course, the transition from online courses to eight hours of physical lectures and classes was not easy for students. According to many SMIC-I students,the transition and adjustments were a rocky road. Daniel Chen (11A) said, “My biggest adjustment is waking up [at] 7 in the morning and listening to 40-minute-long classes. My past 8 months have been sleeping till 11am and [having] brunch while zooming. I really miss those times.” Many students from various grades all share the same thoughts as Daniel with a disturbing amount of similarity. Brian Kim (12B) stated, “I had to force myself out of my bed very early in the morning, had to take [a] shower every morning and night, and most importantly, had absolutely no control over my daily routine as the [school’s] time table decided what I do next or where I go next rather than myself.” In quarantine, controlling sleep schedules and timelines were a normal thing, but in actual school, everything was set for the students; they had no control over their sleep schedule and daily routines. Not only did people have to adjust to the busy and fast paced school life, but wearing a mask everyday was also a big difference compared to online school. Justin Liao (9C) complained that the biggest adjustment was “Wearing masks all the time and [having] less time to do other [daily activities].”
As exhilarating as physical school is, it was inevitable that the transition from online zoom classes and assignments to physical school was a major challenge to students of all grades. From waking up early and listening to lectures to sleeping late because of the heavy homework loads, there is no doubt that attending school physically is a big contrast to the slow paced online school.
Featured image — Cartoon Image of Zoom calling Photo courtesy of Michigan Daily
by Shirley Zou