On March 12, 2020, everything changed.

Most students and even myself thought we were just getting a few days off, but we were all very wrong. A few days turned to a week, then another week and then going to a month. Little did we know, this was just the beginning to something disastrous that will change many lives forever.

So many things have changed since then the last time everyone was in school. Now everyone has to wear a mask when going out to places, hundreds of thousands of people have died due to Covid-19, many sports and activities have been cancelled, we are still remotely/distance learning, and most importantly to me: my senior year is pretty much ruined, like many others.

Some seniors are concerned because they aren’t learning and gaining the knowledge like they have been for their entire lives. Teachers are still getting used to the technology while teaching classes, they are learning a whole new way of teaching to many that are also new to this type of learning, so we are all over the place as a whole sometimes. Even though I know my experience isn’t the best right now or how I imagined it would go, I wanted to seek and see how other people’s experience with distance learning and how corona has affected them during these times.

During these times, many of my friends and I haven’t been able to interact with each other the same way since we don’t see each other in school, plus we still need to be cautious because of Covid-19, so we don’t go out that much anymore either. Even though I haven’t been able to see a lot of my friends, I have been able to see a few of my friends/teammates. One of my new teammates is Jesus Almanzar, he is also a football player but, his football season has got canceled so he wanted to try something new: he went out for soccer. Even though he did play most of the season with us, he was still devastated that his football season was canceled after all the hard work he has put in and all the pain he has been through. Jesus is one of the people I have asked questions to and wanted to see how he felt about everything that’s going on now. When I talked to Jesus, he told me corona has affected him in many ways including his last season of football.

“Covid has been affecting me in many ways, the two biggest are physically and mentally,” he said. “Physically because all the sports that I do for example soccer, and indoor track have been completely canceled, so I find it hard to do physical activity inside the house and outside because it’s starting to get freezing cold.”

For an athlete, it is very important to keep your body right and stay active but, like Jesus said, it is getting harder because it’s beginning to get cold and indoor activities sometimes don’t do the same things like outdoor activities can like running or doing hills. 

Before any of the pandemic kicked off, teams were able to practice in big groups, but now it is only 6 people per group and everyone needs to stand 6 feet apart, which is unreal because how are we supposed to bond and have good chemistry with one another if we can’t practice as a whole team?

We also talked about how corona has/is affecting him and this is what he had to say.

“It has affected me mentally because now I spend more than half of the day looking at a computer screen doing nothing but listening and staring not being able to socialize with my friends,” he said.

When he said this I understood his pain and frustration. I felt like I knew every last bit of pain behind every word. It’s just surreal that all of us seniors, years are being ruined by this virus. The year is coming to an end, and we still are not in school and many sports are postponed, which is devastating to us senior athletes because we can’t enjoy our season like it would be a regular season and we can’t experience senior year field trips, senior photos, senior prom, or even worse: our senior graduation.

Not being in school is horrible for the most part, but is it really for the best? Distance learning is new to most of us in school, it is very weird having to login on a laptop everyday to learn. Students have to attend class every morning, the days rotate from A and B days, four classes a day and school ends at 11:20 a.m. now. When you see it and think about it, distance learning seems like it will be the easiest thing to do but, in some cases, it is not that easy. Now that most students have “more time” to do what they want, most upper class students are working and trying to do some instead of sit home all day and be bored.

Many grocery stores and fast food restaurants were hiring and getting busy when the pandemic just started, so many of us took the chance and got a job. Now doing distance learning while having a job is the trickiest part because now we have to wake up early, be prepared for school, have teachers give us tons of work in such a little time span and then after school go to work while a pandemic is going on. Now when you think it is time to unwind, you have to remember that you are a student first and have to complete multiple assignments when you’re tired and beat down.

“It gives me time to spend more time in real-world situations,” Jesus explained. “For example, I get to work more and I get to focus on my body and well being.” he said. “The teachers are making it impossible with all the work they expect us to do like we have nothing else to do, and it could really start to stress me out.”

I agree with that statement because us students do have other things to do like work after school, but we all have to understand that all of this work that the teachers are handing out rapidly is to help us prepare for college or for the life ahead of us.