What A Freshman Year!

Who knew this pandemic would rapidly become a global pandemic that had the potential to shake the world and my first year of high school? I know I didn’t, and I am sure many of you were in the same boat. I hoped to make new friends and meet new people, join clubs and achieve my academic goals. I expected the year to be just like a regular school year, except for wearing masks, social distancing, and hand sanitizing. However, it all changed when I entered my first class, which surprisingly had a mere seven students, to have my teacher explain the harsh reality: no lockers, lots of independent work, and sitting through almost 4 hours of class. I remember thinking and asking questions that only my future self could answer, “Will I survive this year of high school? When will this get normal? Will I like it?” and I am sure many other grade nines thought the same. 

I am now just days away from finishing my freshman year and am in awe at how quickly this year flew by. I want to take a trip down memory lane and see the hurdles I got past in this strenuous time.

A burden of this year was the quadmester system. To cover everything in half the time, I had to learn the same curriculum within twice the speed. As a cause, I had math tests every week and science units completed in 2 weeks. How did we do it? We had to cohort, meaning we had to go to school on alternate days. The days I was at home were “asynchronous days,” which I learned was more free time for you to do homework. In classes such as science, it was a burden. I had piles of assignments and work that I hadn’t learned yet. However, in my English class, I found the pace slow. Little homework was given, and our teacher was usually late, which resulted in me feeling unproductive during asynchronous periods. Consequently, we didn’t have exams. While some may consider this lucky, I was slightly disappointed not to know what exams in high school were like. However, something that made quadmesters tolerable was seeing my friends. 

I realized that no matter how the pandemic changed my peers and my lives, it did not stop us from becoming friends and finding ways of communicating. It was harder to talk face-to-face because of masks and social distancing, so most introductions were online.

My classmates created group chats on Instagram, where we would ask for homework help and introduce ourselves. We occasionally had game nights where we’d play a then-very popular game called Among Us. Before tests, we’d schedule Google meets to study together and help clear any doubts we had. And upon transitioning to another quad, we met new people and made more friends.

At the end of quad three and beginning of quad four, I had to move to online learning. It was stressful, as I tended to lose motivation and concentration during online learning, and my eyes were strained at the end of the day. I also couldn’t go to school and get my textbooks. However, my teachers’ creativity helped push me through to the end while achieving the marks I wanted. They asked questions at the beginning of class like, “what animal would you want to be?” and “what’s your favourite movie?” To compensate for the textbooks, they would make their own notes for us to copy down. They made the courses as interactive as possible. My geography teacher would share stories, and my science and gym teachers had jamboard discussions or made Kahoots before a test. To my surprise, we also had some group projects along the way that helped us interact with our classmates. I hated writing numerous paragraphs and essays in some of my classes, so some of our teachers would make us record a video or present a slideshow to them instead. These small activities let me express my creativity and made me less bored. 

After a stressful day of studying, school clubs helped revive my energy and get me active. Since clubs couldn’t be held in person, they got carried out online. In my debate club, I was assigned a team and we would prepare our debates through Google Docs and Instagram, and then debate every Wednesday on Google Meets.

For our school’s annual United Cultures Club performance, I participated by making a small clip that got put into a slideshow showing our school’s diversity. I even joined the Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA), a club that educates you in business sectors. They normally host a three-day annual event at a hotel, so that club members from Ontario can meet; however, because of the pandemic, DECA Ontario hosted an online virtual experience through an app called GatherTown where I got the same experiences and opportunities. 

Overall, my high school experience was way better than I had anticipated. Sure, it was different with masks and socially distancing. We had to make friends through online platforms rather than by talking in person and many of the people I got to get close with during my first quadmester later ended up being people I never talked to. We had clubs online through Google Meet or Zoom (which may be why most of my teachers would call my class “zoomers”), and because of our teachers, I hardly ever got bored of what was being taught by them. I am glad that I got to experience starting grade nine in a pandemic, a once-in-a-lifetime experience that held flaws and opportunities.