Collectively, 2020 was a year that forever changed many students’ lives in various ways due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Remote learning and the inability to see people created lots of social anxiety developments, wearing masks created more self-consciousness, and working online made many people impatient and expecting everything to happen at a moment’s notice. People also grew lazier and more unmotivated,with a growing feeling that nothing really matters now that there was a terrible disease among us. No matter who you talk to, most of them will be healing from the wounds of COVID-19, whether we can see those wounds or not. Alas, in the aftermath of a world-wide plague, many people have been discovering that they have mental disorders and illnesses due to the impact COVID-19 had.
Rampage surveyed 23 students and asked them about their experiences and personal feelings about their academic experiences. The majority of students, 69.6%, said that they found themselves more easily distracted than they were before COVID-19. “Covid ruined my life not gonna lie, because Covid made middle school go by so fast, and I wasn’t allowed to [just] live my middle school life or be a middle school kid. It’s like Covid took everything and now I’m in high [school, it] just feels pretty fast,” said one Freshman student surveyed. It seems, however, that more students are getting better grades and having higher GPAs than they were before and during COVID-19. The students surveyed reported having higher GPAs currently than they were before and during COVID-19, with more 4.0 GPAs when initially there were more 3.0s. “I think during COVID-19, things did go up. I think the grades weren’t as strict maybe, you know, I think there was a lot more freedom and flexibility. But I think what we also learned during that time is like, there are different ways to assess what a student knows… it doesn’t necessarily have to be a big final,” said the counseling department head, Lori Mitchell. Students and staff both agree that COVID-19 took its toll on students’ mental health and academic performance, however, there seems to be a gradual recovery and restoration of what is seen as the “normal” student life.