The Struggles of a Pandemic; Schooling, SAT preparation, and Balancing Work

Schooling through the stress of a pandemic 

In this day and age, schooling of all sorts has become a burden to many people especially during the hard times of COVID-19. We are in a routine process of remote schooling where it is difficult to have the same access to your counselors or teachers who would be guiding students directly in person and adhering to anything they need help with.

I’ve discovered that the levels of stress have gone up astronomically for not just students but all people in the world because of the constant change we have been adapting to for the past nine months. I had the most difficult time in school at the end of my junior year than ever before due to the adaptation I had to adhere to being that the circumstances for all people were changing.

I had to figure out how to contact teachers when I needed assistance and how to learn the materials effectively through a computer screen. The difficulty of not being hands on in-person affected me because I’m not a visual learner which lots of people also are not. I’m a hands on learner who needs to visually see and do it for myself in order to get a thorough understanding of materials being taught.

Now that I’ve adapted more to remote learning, I have come to the understanding that throughout life we all must adapt to uncomfortable situations which we all dealt with worldwide.

Importance of Asynchronous Days 

As stated previously, it is extremely important for all schools to recognize the stress that all people are going through during this time. Whether it may be because of sickness, unemployment, family issues, etc—all students and teachers are dealing with issues of their own during the pandemic and should be complied with a “day off” to accomodate for these problems.

Although an asynchronous day isn’t technically a “day off”, it is a day that you don’t have to sign into classes but if you need to contact a teacher for assistance, they’re there if needed. As students, having extra time and additional assistance during a pandemic is crucial because this is a prominent time where everyone has to accomodate for the access that might’ve been lost.

By this, I mean that we have lost access to many things we might’ve had access to previously such as in person help, school materials, libraries, after school tutoring programs which were all very important.

SAT Preparation without paying a fortune 

The aggravation and struggle of having to prepare for the SATs can truly be a pain in the neck for students. For myself, it was a complete disaster and was my main cause of stress my entire junior year. When it comes down to taking standardized tests, not all students are the strongest but this doesn’t mean they are any less intelligent than someone who takes standardized tests well. Every person is different, and I don’t find it fair that we were constructed to take a test which scores our intelligence and depicts whether we have access to a college/university or not. Although I have no control over this subject matter, I do know that there are online sources for those students who need to prepare for the SAT but cannot afford to pay a fortune.

Online websites like Khan Academy offer free and full length SAT practice tests. If you have taken the SAT previously, your score is automatically loaded onto college-board and if you link your college-board account to your Khan Academy account—it will distinguish and personalize which subject area you need most focus in.

Balancing work within classes remotely 

Students, especially seniors, have been known to slack off and put forth less effort than any other year due to what they call “senioritis”. Senioritis is the feeling of being sick of school after four years, and no longer have the motivation to function through school as they usually would which puts grades at risk.

Being a senior, I have no shame admitting my levels of motivation have diminished. However, I never allowed my decrease of motivation to affect my work ethic. Having a strong work ethic is crucial during these times, you have to remember the outcome if you tend to slack off and get lazy. I always was the type of student who worried about grades and the consequences if I slack off.

In order to balance my classes, I make sure to complete work as it is assigned. Many students have a bad habit of procrastinating and waiting until the last minute to complete assignments. Through the pandemic, I’ve had a lot more time on my hands so this allowed me to have more focus on each assignment and the time allotted.

I make sure as once I get an assignment, I work on it a little bit each day until it is due. This process allows you to complete this task little by little until you reach the end, if you worked diligently to complete the assignment you’ll have it done with a lot less stress than you would compared to waiting until the last minute.