I cannot stress how much I prefer distance learning over our typical in-class routine. I’ll mention that in every assignment asking about it. Being able to work at my own pace eased a lot of stress that I would normally have if we were doing face to face learning. Still, as always, there is some bad that comes with the good.

Teachers tried hard to push us to do work, but didn’t want to pressure us too much since we are already dealing with the stress of everything that’s going on. As a result, some assignments were marked as “optional”. As bad as it sounds, I’m not one to put in more effort than I have to in order to complete a task. For example, when I found out our grades couldn’t go lower than they were when we left, I slowly started to slack off in classes where I already had an A. I began to just do assignments to get them done, take the test, and that was it for my learning. Because of this laid back schedule, I feel like I wasn’t totally getting the most out of my education, but I can’t blame anyone but myself.

I remember asking one of my friends if he did an assignment due the next day. He told me he was actually about two weeks behind in work in several of his classes. If we were in our normal schooling schedule, this would be worrisome, but I knew that it probably wouldn’t affect his grade that much. When I asked why he (a typically hard-working student) was slacking off, he said to me, “I have no motivation, why put in the effort?”

According to my peers, most felt the same way about distance learning. Several explained how they are having trouble completely grasping the topic as help from teachers was more difficult to get since we weren’t seeing them face to face. Others explained how it encouraged laziness due to how relaxed everything was.

“I found that studying online was much more effective because I understood more than I did in class; however, it can further induce laziness because students underestimate the time needed to work on assignments and study for exams.” – Michelle To

We as students are so used to a back-to-back learning schedule and drowning in schoolwork that when this sudden shift in routine went into action it was difficult to adjust. It’s hard to imagine how I used to do homework until 2 A.M., wake up at 7 A.M., sit in class for hours, participate in extracurriculars, go home and do it all over again the next day.

In the end, nothing can mimic learning in-class as it is. We also can’t please every student with only one “perfect” method. I hope we can learn from this rare experience and maybe change education is as a whole in order to cater to the needs of each student. Although nobody was prepared for this, we are doing surprisingly pretty well for living during a global pandemic and another Civil Rights movement. However I’m really struggling to turn in my math homework while also pushing to abolish the police system at the same time. Wait, what ever happened to those killer wasps?!

*note… featured image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash