Being A Student? Stressful!

“Your school days are the best days of your life”

Apparently so, but have you tried being a student during a pandemic? People spoke of new hobbies and interests that they discovered over the COVID lockdown, and that they really found time to relax and self-improve. But school really acts as a spanner in the works when it comes to trying to engage in these activities.

You want to try painting? Your teacher wants you to complete several mini-paintings and one larger work. Want to try writing? You have to write a dissertation that reflects a past experience, which you can’t even upload to your blog due to plagarism rules. Want to create music? Awesome! But do these compositions first.

Parents say lockdown school ‘isn’t real school’, and they’re absolutely correct. It isn’t.

It’s hell for everyone involved. From the teachers having to juggle a home life with their school life, it can become excruciating. I’ve heard stories of couples who are teachers struggling to do live lessons due to the fact their bandwidth is being taken up by simultaenous Zoom calls.

Now you’d think this would all get better upon the much-anticipated return to school, right?

Oh god no! Thanks to the lack of investment in cheat-proof digital testing solutions — i.e. websites which don’t allow the user to minimise and allow for people to invigilate — most centres now have a packed test schedule. These schedules mean it is not unusual to expect two tests in one day. Our centre needs to have the mock exam, and then the actual exam a week after. The mock exam generally takes place in January.

All of this changing and shifting in normal procedures just shows an outdated system of assessment being pushed beyond breaking point. Students may not get the results they want this year, not because of a broken algorithm of deciding grades, but due to a number of factors. Exhaustion from the constant change; being perplexed at the magnitude and complexity of said change, along with the uncertainty of not knowing what is going to happen next.

I feel as if being a student is massively misunderstood, but I hope this quick read helps to improve understanding of the school system during COVID.