When I heard my ninth grade year would take place online, I was devastated. I was unsure how I would get to know my classmates or stay motivated academically without any physical component of schooling.. The first year of high school is a significant milestone in education, and I worried that many notable aspects of the experience would be left unfulfilled. While making friends and being on campus were inevitably missing, Aragon did an impressive job of adjusting to online learning and welcoming freshmen.
I first felt included in the Aragon community during Link Crew meetings; activities like a virtual escape room allowed me to interact with classmates outside the classroom. Later in the semester, one of my Link Crew leaders mailed me a letter, congratulating me on having gotten through the first months of high school over Zoom. I smiled when I received the letter; it was touching to have someone reach out and relate to the difficulties of distance learning. My Link Crew group met again for St. Patrick’s Day, and shared aspects of our life we were thankful for. Throughout the year, my Link Crew leaders have been there when I had questions or concerns, welcoming me to the Aragon community.
“Classes over Zoom made my relationship with my classmates formal and impersonal“
Teachers started with an icebreaker and opened breakout rooms to encourage us to connect with other students. Although these efforts did not lead to many new friendships, they helped me get to know classmates better.
When my older brother was a freshman at Aragon, he told me about the owl pellet investigation he did in biology. It was one of the many things I had been excited to do: dissecting an owl pellet and finding a vole’s jaw bones buried amongst fur. With this year being online, I figured I would miss out on that experience, much to my disappointment.
However, when I came on campus for distribution day, I was thrilled to find that the biology teachers had found a way to conduct the investigation from home.
Despite Aragon’s best efforts, some aspects of the freshman experience were inevitably missing. While I’ve gotten to know my peers better through shared classes, I have yet to make new friends. While there were no times in class where I felt expressly lonely, it felt as though something vital was missing during online learning. I missed laughing with my locker partner as I struggled with my jammed lock. I missed panic-studying with my friends during lunch for the test next period. I missed exchanging glances with my best friend from across the room when the teacher announced there would be a group project.
The barriers distance learning created between having classmates and making friends was unavoidable. In-person learning provides circumstances that can not be replicated virtually. To make a friend online, I had to struggle to find convenient means of communication, a reason to contact a classmate and a crafted message to come off as friendly. During in-person learning, a friendly classmate sitting nearby would be enough to make a new friend.
Classes over Zoom made my relationship with my classmates formal and impersonal. The interactions I had with my classmates were in a strictly academic setting, and they were uniformly shared with everyone else in the class. Reaching out to a classmate felt equivalent to reaching out to a stranger, despite having been in the same class for nearly eight months.
The second major loss this freshman year was not physically being on campus. I have not yet slid into a desk of the new classrooms, unwrapped a sandwich over the unfamiliar lunch tables or carried piles of textbooks up the new stairways. I have not familiarized myself with the hidden passageways and shortcuts of the new campus. I have not benefited from the sky-blue swimming pool, the stunning 400-meter track field or the grand theater. In this way, I was not able to truly experience the transition from middle to high school that the freshmen before me could.
Next year as a sophomore, I will be unfamiliar with the experience of attending school in-person. The classmates I saw on Zoom for a year will walk past me in the halls and we will lack recognition of each other. But, gradually, I will come to enjoy the opportunities that the pandemic temporarily suspended: desks will be slid into, sandwiches will be unwrapped and life-long bonds will be made.
