School in a Pandemic - It’s Not Getting Any Easier

Waking up every single day just to attend eight-hour online classes is certainly not how I thought I would be spending my junior year of high school. When my tired eyes are forced open at the intruding sound of my 7 am alarm, I am suddenly filled with impending dread. The thought of sitting through seemingly unimportant classes haunts me every day. With this comes a sense of isolation and hopelessness. What does the educational road look like ahead? I think about and attempt to answer this question often and without success. 

Last September, I started my junior year of high school. When the fall term began, there were still as many uncertainties as there are now six months later. I have always been told that this is the most important year of high school--it will define my cumulative GPA, my extracurriculars, and my admissions into college. Especially with COVID-19, many opportunities for internships and extracurriculars have been revoked, yet colleges still expect to see them on our applications. It seems like a never-ending cycle of stress and confusion. 

Many times I find myself mindlessly staring at my computer screen during a class. When I do pay attention, it seems like I use all of my efforts during these seven-hour zoom classes. Then, when I sit down to begin, at minimum, three hours of computer work after school, I cannot focus. Even when I eliminate other distractions I still find myself zoning out into the distance or looking longingly out my bedroom window searching for some sort of answer. Often, an assignment that would typically take forty minutes ends up taking two hours. 

With all of these never-ending assignments, our sleep schedules as students are basically nonexistent--I frequently find myself finally going to sleep at four in the morning only to wake up three hours later to repeat the same grueling day. As young adults, we are not supposed to be consumed in so much school work that we have no other time to just sit and breathe. 

Especially with college’s increasingly selective acceptance numbers, I find myself constantly worrying about my educational future. For example, in 2016 the University of Pennsylvania’s acceptance rate was 10.1% and now it is 7.7%--a three percent decrease in just four years. Even more astounding, New York University’s acceptance rate fell from 31.9% in 2016 to 16.2% in 2020. This decline is a trend among many, if not all, US colleges. According to CNBC, this college selectivity is going to get even worse due to COVID-19. This grim reality is always in the back of my mind and is just another stressor in trying to navigate high school during this pandemic. The other day I was watching the third movie of To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before and I had to turn my TV off because I found myself stressing out about Lara Jean’s college decision predicament. Even if college or my future is slightly brought up, I become consumed by an intense feeling of dread and worrying. 

I feel as though this is the reality for many students across America. Any discussions between students during school seem to center around stress and feelings of isolation. High schools across the nation preach that they are attempting to combat these feelings. My high school promised that they were doing everything they could to protect the mental health of their student body despite the fact that the stress relief tips are located at the very far corner of the school’s basement where barely any students walk. 

Teachers even seem to be less approachable because they are just as stressed out as the rest of us. When I do have the opportunity to attend in-person classes, my teachers are attempting to painstakingly juggle virtual and in-person students at the same time. There are often extremely frustrating technical glitches, not to mention the many last-minute scheduling decisions made by my school, that only increase both the teachers’ stress and the student body. Sometimes I walk through those concrete halls and wonder if the administration truly cares about mental health.

For example, recently my school canceled an asynchronous day that many students were counting on in order to privately connect with their teacher or catch up on school work. This decision caused a public outcry but the administration chose to do nothing to compensate for added stress. This a frequent theme in my school and in every single other high school across the nation. 

Students like myself struggle to find meaning during seven-hour-long online lectures followed by hours of computer homework. Teachers are working to engage students both online and in the classroom. This continuous cycle seems to be never-ending, and these last-minute decisions only add to high school stress during a pandemic. I truly wish that I could look forward to the end of this pandemic and academic stress, but the end seems so distant and almost completely out of reach.