Are TY Coping?
Alex Wolfe
I’ve lost count of how long we’ve spent social distancing. Not that it’s been that long, I just haven’t bothered counting. I feel that if I make this longer for myself by saying “It’s been 10 days already, how long left”, this whole-time frame will be a lot worse. Like many others in this time I am trying to make the most out of this. But how are people really handling this? I decided I would ask other members in TY 2020 how they were dealing with the time we live in, where history is unravelling before our very eyes.
I sent around an email to a handful of people, asking these 4 questions as I felt they covered a wide enough base
- How have you been finding the online work? Do teachers give too much work, too little, etc.
- Do you think we’ve adapted well?
- How busy have you been throughout the day, have you had to find things to do?
- How long do you think this is going to last for, and do you think much more change will happen to your day to day life during this?
To my surprise, I got back 13 replies. This, I viewed was plenty. Although varying in length, I’ve found quite a range in opinions.
Firstly, tackling the first question. This was one of the most dividing questions. I’d say in general it would balance out to that teachers have handled it well, giving just enough work. I have people saying that “The amount of work is reasonable and it doesn’t make me stress but it definitely keeps me on my toes”, “we definitely aren’t doing as much work then if we were in school” and “I find that the homework we are given varies wildly each day, sometimes being too little and sometimes too much”. People clearly have a wide variety of views and that’s just snippets. Some find it far too relaxed, while others have noted that projects and schoolwork are piling up.
People were mostly positive in how we have adapted; I was happy to see answers such as “Have I adapted well? Very well. My dog is very happy with my current situation as am I”, “I find that we’ve definitely adapted well, as soon as we left the school the teachers were ready with schemes in place to get work out to us”, amongst others. Unfortunately, I can’t share all their responses, as much as I would like to. It is also worth noting, the consensus around procrastination, many are struggling to keep up with work given to us, simply because of distractions in the home or around the place. However, a few people do actually prefer working at home, even with the distractions.
People have kept quite busy; I’ve gotten all sorts of responses from people finding lots of varied activities to keep themselves occupied. Some feel however that they are at the same time finding opportunities to procrastinate and not be busy at all, but could also be very busy if they so wished.
Lastly, I’ve found a large difference in how long this will last for. Some hope to be back to school by May before the Summer term is out. A few think we won’t be back until September however, and some even longer. The most optimistic response I’ve seen is for late April.
This is just a brief summary of people’s responses. Overall, I think we’ve coped well enough, and personally, that by staying optimistic we will get through this tough time as good as possible. It was great seeing in nearly every response some degree of optimism. Hopefully this article has given you some insight as to how students are faring in these trying times.