As one of the final posts to this ¨Quaranteen¨ period, I want to go off with a bang as the year for my sophomore life comes to an end. For me, it was pretty hectic, struggling for grades, trying to balance my athletic and academic life, and planning for the future as well. There were a lot of things to think about, and being in quarantine at least gave me the chance to go over what I learn and didn´t learn. I still have work to do when quarantine started, even I knew that from the beginning, because the school year hadn´t ended just yet, and I want to do the most I can before it does. Knowing this, I still want to improve upon myself and try the best I can even under difficult circumstances.

“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.”
― Og Mandino

Before I started highschool, I usually didn´t care much about elementary school or learning in general. Heck, I got in trouble a lot during elementary before I matured into middle school. In middle school, I got the pleasure to be able to be accepted into the STEAM academic class, which was one of the top and prestigious classes in my middle school. From then on I learned how to become the best student I can be, and learned a lot of tools to help aid me in difficult times. I kept this personal, but I always seemed to have bad luck on my side whenever it came to school. Whether it was a mistake in grading, or a simple name switch, it seems that I was the only one who had those sort of issues in my class. While living through these sort of issues, I knew that there are a lot more people who I don´t know are having tougher situations than I do, and so instead of giving up, I rose out of depression and worked hard to overcome these obstacles. In doing so, I became the top of my STEAM class and the most awarded student in my middle school. Through living in many obstacles, I overcame them all and came prepared to face more. So through living in quarantine, I haven´t lost hope and stopped learning. Instead, I aimed to surpass my limits and improve upon myself even further.

When it comes to distance learning, it was not actually a first experience for me. There were many times that my teachers were sick or absent for other reasons, and so they posted videos explaining the curriculum and lessons while they were gone. So, it wasn´t as hard as it was to me compared to some other students who had trouble finding resources to work on the homework and other assignments regarding the lessons that teachers explain in the videos. I think that from my experience, weekly assignments and plans for the week worked the best for me. I liked how the teacher would plan out week assignments and post it ahead of time, instead of doing daily assignments. In doing this, we can plan out the entire week’s work and adjust it to our personal schedule without any stress. In this way, the teacher won’t have to deal with a lot of “missing” assignments from students who weren’t able to hand it in due to inconveniences. 

Regarding the homework, I would say that using the current technology that school uses today was the best for students to understand and turn in, as its the least difficult and confusing job for them to do. One of my classmates, Khiem Nguyen, said that, ¨…There hasn’t been a dramatic change from school learning to distance learning technology-wise, because I can’t think of a tool that’s used in distance learning that hasn’t been in used pre-quarantine.¨ I would completely agree with that statement, as the more comfortable options for us students during quarantine lessons is doing homework on apps and resources that we’ve already use in the past.

While there were a lot of inconveniences for distance learning, especially for people who didn’t have a lot of experience watching videos and online learning, I think that the most difficult thing was the due dates for the assignments. While some of my teacher gave his/her students the pleasure of a weekly time to plan assignments, there was some that gave us daily assignments. While it would require less planning and quicker time to grade for teachers, from my point of view there were a lot of issues that goes with having such a quick grading system. There were a lot of things that other students could be busy with, and they wouldn’t have enough time to finish the assignment or they wouldn’t be able to try their best on the assignment, causing their grades to go down.

While there are other ways that schools are trying to implement changes into this distance learning if it does have to continue till next year, I believe that staying as we are is good enough for next year. Even if there was an option to be able to go to school literally, there is a lot of issues and precautions to go over in order to manage the situation. Just staying at home is the most safest option, and while there are teachers that would like to to face-to-face teaching, I feel that the other options would have too much chaos in trying to balance between face-to-face and online teaching.  Even though it would mean having to continue not being able to go to school until the quarantine is over or the vaccine is found, it would be the most safest option for others around me and myself as well.

“If you expect life to be easy, challenges will seem difficult. If you accept that challenges may occur, life will be easier.”
― Rob Liano

To finish off this post, I would like to thank my English teacher, and for every one of my classmates that have supported me this year. I know that sophomore year was one of the more difficult years in high school, but you all have gave me the courage to go beyond and build up to what I am today, and to what I will become in the future. Even if students think nothing of homework and studying, I still believe that there’s much more to learn than just writing and memorizing facts and formulas. From these posts I learned a lot more about myself, the people around me, and I reflect upon those and improve as well. Whatever the situation, I want to rise to the occasion and become the best that I can be, no matter what. I hope that you all stay safe, and I’ll see you again next year.