Month: October 2023

How COVID-19 taught me important lessons

By Cameron Strawhacker

 During Covid I had a meaningful experience, learning the importance of friends and family. Although the COVID-19 pandemic was hard on everyone, there were some bright spots and positives that came from it- for me, this was developing a closer relationship with my brother.

  Beginning from the middle of March to the end of summer I couldn’t see or hang out with any of my friends really at all. I didn’t see my extended family much either during this time. At times it got lonely and boring. However, one positive I got from it was the closer bond I formed with my brother. We were close growing up but like most brothers, we would fight and didn’t always get along the best. As we got older we continued to get along better but we also didn’t see each other as often. I hadn’t thought about it until recently but with both of us being involved in sports and different things, we didn’t see each other much when I was in middle school, and he was in high school. During covid that changed.

  Being locked in our houses for months we saw each other every day, we spent hours talking, hanging out, and playing video games together. I remember the first couple of times we had to get groceries during the pandemic, my mom did the new curbside pickup from Hyvee so that we didn’t have to go in. After the first couple of times, she would start asking me and my brother to go pick it up. We used this time to our advantage and would drive around for an hour before picking up the food. Because gas was so cheap at the time we weren’t worried about going through a tank of gas in a couple of days. We would use this time driving around listening to new music or talking about things happening at the time. My favorite though, was catching up on all the stories we had from the past 3-4 years of our lives that we hadn’t had the time previously to share with each other. 

  These hard times eventually passed and he went off to college the next fall in Iowa City. Starting high school myself I was pretty busy, so I didn’t think about him being gone as much. But knowing we spent our time during the pandemic catching up and becoming closer gave me peace of mind not seeing him for long periods of time. We still text and Snapchat every day four years later, something that we never did when we lived together before he left for college. Because of the time we spent during COVID-19, I will forever be grateful for family and friends and the relationships I have with them.

How the Covid-19 Pandemic is Still Affecting High School in 2023

By Cameron Strawhacker

Credit: OPN Architects

Living in the aftermath of a pandemic, high school in 2023 is concerning. Coming off the Covid-19 pandemic there are still lingering effects worldwide, but especially in our high schools. Whether it’s gaps in our education, lazy work ethics, or high absence rates from students- it almost feels like us high school students won’t recover from the pandemic before it’s too late. Now this isn’t the case for everyone but for a majority of students this is an everyday reality. 

Many students go to class everyday and struggle to learn advanced concepts or even beginner level ideas because the basics of concepts were taught three years ago through a google meet. I have experienced this many different times in multiple classes, and I know many of my peers experience this as well. In whatever version of online or hybrid school students were in, learning conditions were not ideal. This continues to impact students today. 

Another effect of the pandemic and online school is procrastination. After talking to people who finished high school before or during the pandemic, levels of procrastination have seemed to continually grow. Many students  wait to write papers and do homework until the night it’s due because that’s all we’ve known during our high school days. During online school there were little consequences to staying up all night or procrastinating work until the last moment because of the odd schedules. Now as students have returned to in person learning there are more consequences to their procrastination. 

Lastly, and maybe most important of all is absences. It’s easy to say to yourself, “It’s okay if I miss a couple days of this class, I can just do the work at some point” when our beginning of high school was waking up 5 minutes before a google meet, and making the decision whether to grab our laptop and join the google meet while we lay in bed, or just skip it today and go back to sleep. Because there were no consequences and attendance was rarely taken online, this mindset has carried into everyday schedules of high school students. 

For everyone’s sake hopefully something happens that flips all of this around for those in high school in 2023, before it has a lasting impact into the next steps of our lives.