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.
I like the specificity as you talk about google meets and your personal experience with the pandemic
What has your high school experience since the pandemic has relatively cleared up like?
I think the post could use a little bit of grammatical cleanup.