By GABRIELLE NEFF
Sheridan High School Student
Editor’s Note: The Sheridan Student Column is brought to readers by Sheridan High School’s 10th grade English class, taught by Abby Williams.
One year ago today, I was a freshman in high school. I was a very involved student wrapping myself up with class presidency, playing soccer, managing my school’s basketball team, and participating in marching, pep, and concert band, all while maintaining straight A’s. Nothing made me feel happier or more accomplished than achieving good grades, after-school activities to keep me occupied, and just overall learning.
I loved it and thrived off it, as nerdy as that sounds.
After the pandemic officially began and all schools across the nation were sent into electronic learning, my attitude began to shift. With nothing to look forward to and no school to show up to, I went into a slump. My work wasn’t based on learning the material anymore. It was all about completion, just getting it done. My mind kept telling me, “As soon as we finish this school year online, everything will go back to normal for your sophomore year. You’re going to love this again. This is just a phase.” And that was just the beginning.
After an eventful extended summer, I thought I would come back and find my passion again. After a single day of attending, I could tell I lost the sheer love for being at school. It wasn’t how it used to be. After weeks of e-learning, my brain was rewired to think of schoolwork as just a big test of completion and not actually learning. After-school activities no longer seemed worth it if my peers and I couldn’t attend them like we used to.
For example, now when you walk into school, the first thing on your mind isn’t the excitement for tonight’s basketball game. It’s the worry of “Will COVID guidelines even allow me to be present for tonight’s basketball game?” Overall, this resulted in me dropping all forms of band and being a team manager. The fun just wasn’t there and the constant uncertainty seemed like a heap of anxiety to take on.
Even though I don’t enjoy it as much as I was once accustomed to, I’m still very conscientious about my grades. It’s something very important to me and always will be. One thing that especially pains me is the impact of COVID on them. I have always been a straight-A student. Never in my entire life have I gotten otherwise. After being sent home to a 14-day quarantine due to in-school COVID exposure not once, but twice, in a single semester, my grades felt the impacts.
Nothing compares to in-school learning. Being forced to learn the material other kids are learning in class at home and then taking quizzes over that material upon return is complete insanity to me. (Note: This isn’t our educators’ fault, as they feel these effects just as much as us students.)
This is what I ultimately believe shot me into my first C as a quarter letter grade. (Thank you, chemistry, for being absolutely impossible to teach yourself and for leaving me with absolutely no motivation for your subject.) Although my semester grade was only a B, and some folks may call me crazy for being upset about a B, it hurt to see a goal of mine go down the drain for something no other generation has ever had to deal with.
I’m a happy girl, don’t get me wrong. I’ve found so much happiness in the past year I would’ve never imagined. For example, I’m surrounded by the best people in the world and love playing on my soccer team. I’m still class president and carry a 3.9 GPA. I just find it so fascinating how much the daily life of a teenager has changed in the past year. It’s beyond my mental capacity, and I can’t even begin to express everything I feel to myself, yet convey it in my writing.
I just find it beyond depressing that I took walking into a building with a bunch of annoying, loud, and screaming high schoolers (myself included) for granted.