Towards the end of this year, schools had no choice but to shut down due to the global pandemic known as the COVID-19; this leaves students to responsibly complete their work online on a day to day basis. There are many benefits and drawbacks to doing online school, and it is definitely is not easy for everyone. Most students would rather be with their friends and favorite teachers at school. For others, they find it surprising they can find the motivation to get everything done on their own and successfully completing their work while enjoying it.

 “My opinion on online school is I think we should just pass all students and be done. A majority of students most likely will not contribute to online school,” junior Sarah Hanselman explained. 

 It can be easy to lose motivation and put assignments off because students know they have all day to complete their work. But, for some students, their motivation goes into being able to have the rest of the day to themselves and participating in their hobbies, so they complete their work early.

Sophomore Nick Koehn said he really likes distance learning because it gives him more time for his hobbies.

It is now possible to have time outside of school to do things students were not able to do before, which was caused by being present at school most of the day. Distance learning is a way to have more time for hobbies, spend more time with family and get other things done.

On the other hand, for some students, their hobbies were at school including sports, seeing their friends and different clubs they might have been involved in. Everyone is interested and involved in different hobbies, which is why it differs for each person.

Junior Ingrid Palmquist explained she misses seeing everyone every day, including her friends, and just being able to have actual contact with people.

Distance learning prevents students from communicating face to face with teachers and fellow students, this can be hard for students who learn better while being taught face to face with the opportunity to easily ask questions. Although it is not quite the same, teachers offer Google Hangouts with their students to answer questions and help students as they would in a classroom. For some students, this can be stressful and spark anxiety, especially when teachers require discussions through Google Hangouts.

Overall, the opinion of students is distance learning can be very difficult and a lot of the factors going into that is not being able to be with friends and their teachers. Everyone is doing the best they can and trying to be flexible with this, but it can be very difficult.

There are fantastic parts that go into it as well, such as having more time to get work done in case of a loss of motivation, and teachers are always watching for emails with questions and concerns. Hopefully, next year, things will be normal again and students will find a stronger liking for regular school since it was ripped away from them this year.

Koehn explained he likes distance learning better because it gives him more time, and for him, it is easy to navigate the tools for online schooling.