Distance learning; what an odd term. Learning but from a distance. For the past three months I have been a distance learner because covid-19 has unfortunately taken in school learning away from me. This was not the way I expected myself to finish my junior year, but I’ve learned to adjust.

I will admit that this was not easy. It was not easy to juggle both my personal life and school work. When I’m at school, I am able to forget about my personal life for the couple hours I am there, but through distance learning I had to think about it all. It’s also hard to not see my friends everyday because they are the people that make school more bearable if I’m being honest. School was like an escape; it was a routine. Yes, there were days when I wouldn’t want to be at school, but being there gave me much more motivation that my bedroom does.

Although, being at home has been very refreshing. It has given me time to self-reflect, spend time with my family, and learn how to manage my time. This isn’t an ideal life we’ve expected to be living, but this is our new normal. We didn’t know that a pandemic was going to come in and take so many things away from us.

The tough part about distance learning was that, it’s hard to self teach. I will strongly admit that I’ve struggled trying to teach myself new material even though my teachers taught me through a video. This wasn’t the same as being able to interact with my teachers and classmates face to face and ask questions when they spark. On the bright side, this was a great opportunity to experience what type of learning we enjoy whether it is in person or distant.

In hopes of returning to school in the fall of 2020, I hope that teachers understand that as students, we will be behind. It will take a little while for us to find the rhythm again. It has been difficult to adapt to distance learning, but it will also be hard to go back to normal. Well, it won’t ever be “normal” again, but it will be difficult to go back to in person learning. I hope that teachers are ready to re-teach certain material for it was difficult to understand it when learning in the comfort of our own homes.

In a nutshell, distance learning isn’t what we planned for ourselves and it wasn’t easy, but it has given us the opportunity to grow. An opportunity to better understand ourselves, those around us, and the type of world we live in. It teaches us to not take things for granted and to appreciate all that we have before it is too late.