By Raajeswari Muthukumar
Covid has impacted all grades in different ways, but reality struck for the freshmen class of 2020-2021 when they had to face school. Freshman year is the beginning of a chapter and it’s a hard switch from middle school to a new environment that we call the high school.
From recent years, the freshman class of 2020-2021 had to handle it in the worst way, especially to those who were remote all year. This raises the question: How did the freshmen (sophomores now) adjust to their “new environment?”
When freshmen start high school, they take on more difficult classes, meet new people, and begin preparing for college. High School has its ups and downs, but the Freshmen class of 2020-2021 had more downs than ups.
Two sophomore students at RHHS were anonymously interviewed on their opinion regarding their difficulties as freshmen. They stated how difficult it was learning through screens, especially with higher paced classes and how proper communication between peers and teachers were cut off.
One sophomore feels that she would have done better with in-person learning, rather than being a remote learner all year. It was challenging for her since she felt she would have done better with actual experience rather than learning through a screen. She said, “I learn best through experience and due to remote learning I was not able to directly participate in the ways that in person kids were able to.”
In-person learning and remote learning was a relatively new topic for both the students and the teachers, but mostly the teachers interacted with the in-person students more. The only way for the remote learners to get in contact with the teachers was through email or in online meetings. If you have a question outside of the online meets, you would need to email them, and that can take a long time to answer since teacher’s don’t look at their emails 24/7, and you can’t fully express your questions through a paragraph.
Communication was the most important thing that affected the remote learners.
Many of the freshmen weren’t able to do anything against covid protocols and it made their freshmen experience boring. For example, they couldn’t remove their masks inside the school building, weren’t able to interact with their friends as often, and didn’t have the chance to experience the “fun” side of high school, such as going to football games.
“My freshmen year was fine. We didn’t really get to do anything new or fun so it was mostly boring. Nothing that you or anyone could have done would have made it better as we couldn’t go against the covid protocols,” said a sophomore.
Do the sophomore feel left out? One sophomore states, ”Well being a sophomore nobody really notices you. It’s as if people either mistake you for a junior or a freshman.”
Sophomore students are now slowly adjusting to their “normal” high school journey. “My sophomore year is going well. I am in a marching band, and swim and a couple of clubs so I stay pretty busy. I usually find time to complete my work by staying up late,” states a sophomore.