My education journey has definitely been a ride throughout life. Starting out being in the same school for 9 years straight, to then moving to one with ten times the amount of people, to now being in college with less students than my high school.
My education journey starts at a small K-8 school, with a total of 300 kids throughout all grades. I was a very quiet kid throughout elementary and middle school, and the pandemic did not help with it that all.
The pandemic started when I was in seventh grade, even with my school being very small, we went full remote for the rest of the year. All that I really remember from remote learning was sitting at my dinning room table on a screen for hours on end, and then having to sit there even more just to finish all the homework we received. We stayed full remote for the rest of the year, and once eighth grade came around, we switched to a hybrid schedule (which honestly might have been worse). Going to school for 3 hours, and then having to go right back to the dining table was certainly a struggle. Thankfully we went back to full classes, but with masks, for the second half of the year and that was a breath of fresh air after nearly a year of online learning. We went on 2 class trips (making up for the one we lost last year), and those are some of my best memories from middle school in general.
In my opinion, the pandemic had a very negative impact on education, that I believe we still haven’t recovered from. With students now preferring online learning over going to an actual school, and cheating and AI usage being at an all time high.
In my personal life, it definitely didn’t help with my social life at all. I remained a quite kid for most of high school experience until my senior and have just been getting better thankfully.
Overall, the pandemic had a very negative effect on not only me, but the world of education as a whole and neither has fully recovered yet.