The Switch to School

Before quarantine, we had something that gave us structure, routine, and a sense of balance (or in some cases, major imbalance)- and that was school. School provided structure to our lives- we had classes for 6-8 hours a day for 5 days a week, we had work that we took home with us, and although much of the time it was overbearing and quite burdensome, for many it provided some organization in our lives. After that one date in March when lockdown started, we lost a lot of that. Remote learning wasn’t the same, because doing school from a computer made us actually lose knowledge, our internet, and online usage completely surged, and a lot of us lot any semblance of a sleep schedule.

As the summer wraps up and depending on your school’s plan- soon that routine is going to forcefully reenter your life again! So how do we adjust from months of unproductivity, lack or complete increase in sleep, and all of the other ways that the summer quarantine impacted us?

Some may think that making the switch will be easy- waking up a couple of hours earlier and simply attending classes over Zoom can’t be that difficult, right? But for a lot of others, quarantine has either been quite laid back or unproductive or has been consumed by various extracurriculars with a complete shift in commitments and time management, or lack thereof. The former will have to deal with a complete change in their life dynamic, seeing as their schedule will be quickly filled with the massive school day, and those with an abundance of extracurriculars will have to adapt to time management and probably have to take a lot of things off their plate.

In a way, quarantine has essentially acted as an extra-long summer for us, because we’re facing the same adjusting to school issue as well as the extracurricular overload. So that means transitioning back can’t be that difficult, right?

Well, some may argue that it's more difficult to transition because of how long quarantine was. Summer usually lasts about 2-3 months, but the early ending of school in March gave us double that. We’ve become so used to both staying in and rarely leaving the house due to quarantine, and to the lazy atmosphere of summer. The switch to a rigorous and unyielding schedule is going to be a lot more difficult because the quarantine summer mentality is a lot more ingrained in our heads.

Second off, many schools don’t fully know how they’re going to adjust to the pandemic. Whether you’re going back full-time, fully remote, or a hybrid model of some sort, there’s going to be uncertainty for a bit about moving back to a structured education system. I’m sure that you’ve heard this before, but in “these unprecedented times” we have to navigate our situation and make sure that we can stay on top of the rapidly changing ways of doing things, especially something as substantial as school!