by Pedro Ochoa

If someone last year told you that we would be doing all of our classes on our bed via ZOOM, would you have believed them? Of course not. Isn’t it weird that most of the time in our physical classes, our teachers would tell us that we had to put our electronics away? And now, they ask us to open our electronics, because if we don’t, then we will get marked absent. How things have changed in 2020!

Waking up five minutes before class, in your bed, and in your pajamas is amazing right? Can you imagine being in front of a screen for more than ten hours a day? Well stop imagining it, not only are you doing this now, but most of you were doing it before the pandemic (stop shaking your head – you know I’m right).  

Online learning has a lot of positives and negatives. First and foremost, every quarter is different for everyone. There have been many students that are pulling their hair out because they are taking their hardest classes in the first quarter, while some students are sleeping and dreaming of those sheep jumping on clouds because they have free periods. I know this because I was one of those sheep dreamers first quarter, while now I am starting to grow white hairs. 

The best part of online learning has been when the teachers tell us that our mental health matters, and to put some time to ourselves, because there is so much happening in the world right now. We deserve it, after all, they say. Then they tell us not to forget that we have a paper due the next day in MLA format, while also having twenty assignments, and don’t forget that big test at the end of the week that is worth 50% of your grade. How are we supposed to make time for ourselves when we have assignments due every day at 11:59 pm? Not only the students, but also the teachers who end up grading all this stuff. 

Some people are loving life right now, while some do not. Some students have the everyday routine of sleeping for more than fourteen hours a day, including naps, while some barely sleep six. It looks like the teachers have it worse than the students. Not only do they have to grade assignments and give lectures everyday, but they also have their own families and lives that have been turned upside down. Even though most of them have gotten the hang on how to use ZOOM, it’s pretty funny when a teacher is lecturing and there is a funny background noise coming from their microphone.

Zoom is just astonishing, right? The teachers went from telling the whole class to be quiet because we were talking too much in class, to now begging for us to turn our mics on to participate. Again, how things have changed! Also, don’t you love breakout rooms? Either we get put into a room with all of our best buds and we don’t want it to end, or we get put into a room where everyone just does not know how to unmute their mic. You either get the best breakout room or the worst, no in between.  

School ID pictures are this Saturday! Great! Saturday will show how many people are really drained because of the blue light that is projected from these screens. There will be many people with huge bags under their eyes. If you don’t want these, and want to look good for your pictures, listen up. Wet a cloth with cold water and hold it under our eyes for ten minutes. Does it work? I don’t know, I just looked it up on Wikipedia. 

By the way, teachers know when you switch tabs on Schoology and even when you sign up for Chegg.com. Don’t believe me? Read the terms and conditions and don’t just click, “I accept” next time. 

Also, make sure your microphone is muted, you don’t want to be the one that gets caught watching Tik Toks because you forgot to mute your microphone.