The Kentucky Student Voice Team has spent the last year collecting and analyzing data about students’ experiences during the pandemic. Our Coping With COVID Student-to-Student Survey garnered over 9,000 responses from across the state, providing poignant stories and troubling statistics about how students responded to the onset of online learning. Now, nearly one year after the start of the pandemic, school still feels abnormal — some students are online and others in a hybrid model, but none of us have returned to a school schedule reminiscent of earlier years. So at the start of a new semester, the editorial board decided to reflect on our own stories. Where did we think we’d be by now? How do we feel about where we are? And what’s next?
Sadie Bograd, senior at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, attending school virtually
I got through the first semester of my senior year alright. In the whirlwind of applying to college and acclimating to classes, it was easier to ignore the disappointment that came with a semester of online learning — after all, I was grateful to even get synchronous instruction. But now, having sent off my applications and adjusted to all my courses, I’m left with a lingering discontent. It’s my last semester of high school; I ought to be hanging out with friends and searching for prom dresses and celebrating the culmination of four years of hard work. Instead, I’m stuck at home, with in-person graduation a distant fantasy and prom looking even less likely.
In an objectively terrible era like this one, though, it feels healthy to accept my dissatisfaction. We’ve all lost opportunities and will likely lose more — why not cry over spilled milk? Yet I can mourn what I’ve lost and celebrate what I still have in the same breath. I have friends who make fantastic lunchtime Zoom companions; I have parents with whom I actually enjoy conversing and a dog who reminds me to go outside; I have the privilege and resources to be able to stay safe at home. I think that in the middle of such a confusing time, all I can do is accept my confusing and contradictory feelings, and do my part to ensure that 2021 is a little better.
Sofie Farmer, senior at the Gatton Academy, on campus with hybrid learning
When I returned to campus this school year, I was scared. I didn’t know how it was even possible to stay safe going from living at home with my immediate family to a building with 180 other juniors and seniors. The idea of residential living seems to inherently conflict with social distancing — and it does. Trying to keep everyone healthy is almost impossible with students obeying social distancing and masking at different levels, and these regulations are impossible to enforce at all times. I knew that before returning to campus. It’s not the classrooms where COVID will be spread here; it’s the restaurants, dorm rooms, frat houses, sororities, and social events that come with being on campus.
Starting off my second semester, it feels like we’ve all been desensitized to COVID. Mask usage started slacking a lot faster than last semester and everyone is cooped up indoors. It feels like we don’t care anymore, but we also are all sitting on edge waiting for that email saying someone in the building has tested positive for the virus. However, having a couple in-person classes has really helped me cope with the difficulties of being physically on campus and still having online learning. The teachers I’ve really connected with this semester are the ones I see in person and have that consistent mask-to-mask interaction with. I understand how difficult it is to keep everyone safe, and I appreciate the opportunity I have to learn in a classroom.
Spandana Pavuluri, sophomore at duPont Manual High School, attending school virtually
A first day without walking down the crowded halls, eyes glued to the schedule that you have yet to memorize, waving to the familiar people that you haven’t seen in three months, doesn’t feel like a first day at all. Every year, those are the memories I picture as I remember that first day of school. On August 23rd, 2020, though, I got out of my bed, brushed my teeth, and just as I was about to pull out the clothes from my drawers and the straightener from my counter, I realized I had nowhere to go. It only hits you on that first day of school, at 8:47 A.M., that the new reality is school at home. The semester started off with some icebreakers, some quick Google Forms that replace the “meeting your teacher conversations,” and the struggles of figuring out new online platforms. Conversations with the other kids in your class turned into silent breakout rooms and homework meant staring at the screen for hours. Everything felt familiar, but so, so distant.
Fast forward to six months in, and I can gladly say that I’ve begun to adjust a bit more. I learned to always check that my mic is muted when I’m not talking, and to check the to-do list on Google Classroom, and to never, ever mess with my wifi settings five minutes before class. There have been pros and there have been cons. There is no day where I can ever say that online school is normal but, during a pandemic, it feels like the closest to normal we can get.
Rebecca Vaught, tenth grader at Frankfort High School, attending school four days a week
Being back in school felt like a breath of fresh air after a long, long year of being virtual. In January, sophomores at my school got the option to come back into the building. I opted in. Immediately, I was met with the challenges of hybrid school during a pandemic. While my teachers were trying their hardest, there’s truly no effective way to teach students who are both virtual and in-person. Despite being at school, many of my classes simply continued to be virtual: I would log onto a Google Meet and participate in the class like I would if I were sitting at my home desk. The only difference was that I could see the teacher on the other side of the room, talking to me through their computer. Nevertheless, there were many benefits that came with returning in-person. I was able to talk to friends about classes in real time, had teachers able to come to me if I needed help with a project, and could hear words of encouragement when school got too overwhelming. All of this was well worth the struggles of hybrid learning.
I go to a small school, roughly 300 students. I would estimate we have fewer than 100 students consistently attending in-person. Going back to school doesn’t feel “normal.” It doesn’t feel like it did a year ago. In some of my classes, I only have one or two other classmates attending in-person, and we sit across the room from each other. Sitting two people to a table at lunch doesn’t feel anything like it did last year, when I would pull extra chairs over to make room for more friends. But there is a small sense of hope in coming back in-person. Being able to interact with other people who understand the struggles of taking classes during a pandemic is worth the problems that come with hybrid learning, at least for me. Everything about this pandemic is hard, but to me, hybrid learning is a glimmer of hope that one day we may be able to return to whatever the “new normal” is.
Sara Falluji, sophomore at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, attending school virtually
When the clock turned to 2021 and second semester started for me, I felt as if some illusion had broken. In many respects, both semesters share a lot of similarities: I wake up at the same time, I get up between classes to watch the sunrise every day, I cycle through the same three foods for lunch, I flick my camera on and off across Zooms, and I feel the somewhat melancholic exhaustion of this new reality settle in as soon as I say goodbye to my teacher at 3:15 P.M. and lay down in my bed with a surfacing headache and a test to study for.
The difference between first and second semester, for me, is the increase in workload that leaves me disoriented as I am faced with the realization that this familiar nightmare of isolation didn’t come to a climactic close with the new year. Though returning in person scares me, trying to stay afloat as I log into my fifth Zoom of the day is even more terrifying. Despite this, I try to remain hopeful for the next few months even as I struggle with a difficult school semester, and I attempt to hold faith in the idea that this experience is temporary and may prepare me well for the future. If anything, I can look forward to the breath of relief I’ll release when I can finally hug one of my friends again.
Sophia Brannen, sophomore at West Jessamine High School, attending school in a hybrid model
Starting a semester going into the unknown is difficult, to say the least. Many West Jessamine high school students, like me, have had to adapt to about three different modes of learning in the past few months. Starting a new semester, nothing has changed: we have had to adapt to yet another way of learning, a hybrid model. Having to change every month to another learning style is not ideal, but as things have gotten better I am hoping that we will be doing hybrid the rest of the year. I am trying to stay optimistic that school will be open for the rest of the year, even if we are in a hybrid model. Being able to be physically in school and being taught face to face has helped me be able to enjoy learning again. The hybrid model also means I am able to have a break and refresh for the next day of school. For me personally, adjusting to hybrid was hard, but once I gave it a chance I actually got to realize the positive outcomes of it. Again, I am hoping that I am able to stay in school for the rest of the school year, but living through a year like 2020 has taught me to prepare for the unexpected.
Lucas Jones, senior at Woodford County High School, attending school virtually
First it was the summer when everything would be fine again. Then it was the fall, and the start of a new school year which historically had always offered a clean slate. When these seasons came and went with little to no resolution to a global pandemic, disheartened students — myself included — could only hope that things would be different come spring. Yet here we are, with spring fast approaching and our educational experience still radically different from we had all hoped for. So the question poses itself: what is there to look forward to? What positive light can be cast upon this gloomy and insipid situation? For me, as a senior looking towards college, asynchronous learning done entirely from home has exposed me to the self-discipline that will be required in order to excel at the undergraduate level. In order to make virtual learning work (maybe even work well), I not only had to create schedules for myself, compile resources I needed, and be willing to reach out to teachers and peers who I couldn’t see for help, but I also had to answer the “why” for my continued devotion to school in this radically different learning landscape. As it turns out, COVID-19 has made me aware of my true passion for learning, beyond grades and rankings and AP exam scores. Even when I can’t be in the classroom, I find myself engaged fervently with the modules my Psychology teacher shares with us, because I genuinely enjoy learning about the brain. Even when it feels useless, I continue to ask my teachers questions over email, simply to expand my mind. It is this underlying passion for inquiry that has helped me endure the tumult of the pandemic and the modified learning environment it brought with it.
So, I suppose my answer to the question of ‘what really is there to look forward to anymore?’ would be university, when our society may once again experience at least the guise of normalcy, when I can socialize once again with peers and study in the public library and hear my instructor lecture without the imposition of a poor bandwidth, and when my laborious efforts to stay disciplined in my virtual school work will come to fruition in my quick adjustment to the rigors of undergraduate learning. I did not ask for this heightened level of maturity nor these philosophical realizations at such a young age. In fact, I’d much rather be concerning myself with senior festivities such as prom, graduation, senior breakfast and the like. But still, I will continue to look towards some positive to be gleaned from this overwhelming sea of negativity that is the pandemic and encourage fellow students to do the same, at least for a little while longer. What other option really is there?
Madison Wright, eighth grader at Maurice Bowling Middle School, attending school two days a week
I started my seventh grade year normal as can be until the third quarter; everyone was talking about this new sickness called COVID-19, it sounded really scary, and everyone acted like it was going to be the end of the world. Well, they weren’t entirely wrong. COVID cases rose tremendously and essential needs became scarce. This was completely new to those who didn’t go through the swine flu pandemic, and even then, new symptoms and new titles roamed the air. We left school expecting to return in two weeks, then we got delayed four more, then two more, and eventually the end of the school year was upon us. We completed paper copy NTI work and were excited to know there shouldn’t be any more of that when we entered the 2020–2021 school year once the government gave schools money to buy computers for children to stay virtual. Hardly anyone went to school on time (in August); many returned September or November on an A-B schedule, not 5 days a week like normal. We then had a second big wave of cases right around election time which made schools close down from right before Thanksgiving until after Martin Luther King, Jr., day. Computers and technology are a main part of every child’s life now, along with wearing masks, lunch dividers, gloves, and arrows on the hallways. It’s scary and no one knows what’s going to happen next. While they have released this COVID vaccine, we can’t tell what the long-term effects are from that. So we continue to pray for goodness and normalcy in today’s society.
Ana Despa, sophomore at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, attending school virtually
I, like many others, naively thought that by 2021 it would be safe for us to transition to in-person learning. On New Year’s Eve, my Instagram feed was flooded with posts where viruses replaced the zeroes in 2020 and a vaccine stood in for the 1 in 2021. This gave me hope that once the ball dropped, life would be normal. However, as the weeks flew by, that hope dwindled. This semester started virtually once again. Contrary to the first semester, though, this year’s classes kicked off with a plethora of assignments and tests. In some classes teachers have to cram full units into two or three weeks because virtual learning has put us behind where we should be. I usually pride myself for staying on top of school work while balancing extracurriculars, but this semester, procrastination and late nights have become my new best friends. Additionally, participating in high school athletics this year is difficult. Doing assigned at-home workouts has reduced the “team” aspect of team sports. This, combined with my exponentially-growing pile of schoolwork, has made continuing high school athletics seem not worth it.
Because of the social disconnect that comes with online school, I found myself growing closer to people from non-school-sanctioned sports and extracurriculars, whereas I “grew apart” from some of my friends from school. While the Zoom fatigue may be setting in, I recognize that I am fortunate to be leading a comfortable life in the midst of an event that has ended the lives of many and deeply uprooted the lives of many more.
