The start of the 2020-2021 school year gave the student body the choice to either complete school from home or attend classes in person, on campus. Due to student fears of spreading or coming in contact with Covid-19, the school allowed students to work from home, and then later return for the remainder of the school year, if they choose.

After spending the first six weeks learning from home, some students choose to return to campus with the start of the new six weeks on Monday. 

“I’m thrilled to see my friends and be able to communicate with my teachers much more than I could’ve on the computer,” sophomore Rubi Lopez said. “I haven’t seen [my friends] in a long time. I’m really looking forward to being able to talk to them.”

Aside from the ability to communicate in person with teachers and reunite with friends and social groups some students show excitement for being able to participate in extracurricular activities.

“Band and jazz band are pretty much the only reasons for me coming back. Those and friends too,” sophomore David Sparkman said. “The only thing that’s really keeping me from staying home is band.”

The online students shared different reasons for why they decided to return to campus, one of them being the inefficiency and complexity of staying up to date with classes.

“I thought it would be easier to stay at home, however that didn’t happen. I found it much more difficult to concentrate on my work,” Lopez said. “Online school was definitely not for me. I’ve been an A honor [roll] student for a long time now, and now my grades started slipping. I realized that this situation was not beneficial to me. I found it harder to study and concentrate on the task at hand.”

Another student showed little to no difficulty in working from home.

“I [used to] wake up and practice music, which is fun, and I can take breaks without worry. I have a lot of free time to work on other projects, and I don’t have to stay on [the Google] Meet very long. At the beginning of class I get my assignments for that class, and it takes me a while to understand. But, for the most part, the stuff I do is easy. Some classes give me quite a bit of work, and others are a breeze. Online school is pretty easy when you actually do your work,” Sparkman said.

Handling a class proves to be a difficult task to accomplish and monitoring a digital one at the same time makes the task even more demanding. Since more students attend campus for school, the teachers tend to center their attention on their live class rather than their online class.

“As an online student, I felt personally that I would’ve gained a much better understanding if I were in class. I didn’t get the same teaching methods as my classmates [in person] and wish that I decided to go back to school in the first place,” Lopez said.

Although some students lack attention from a few of their teachers, as an advantage they possess more liberty since they study from home, limiting the teacher’s control of his/her online student.

“Online students definitely have more freedom in what they can do, but it’s harder to learn and participate,” Sparkman said. “I think the difficulty in actually learning is a bit more, but the actual difficulty in doing school is way easier and a lot less stressful. Home students can use their free time in their own homes and do whatever, which is a great luxury to have.”