The New Normal

On Campus Student Perspective of the New Normal 

By: Sara Io

Our life, as middle schoolers, and as a community, has changed drastically in the past few months. It started gradually but then, before we knew it, our life changed, and we had to adapt to it. School has started, and finally, we are back to normal. Some scientists and people of the world have said that we will never go back to usual life after the pandemic. But life will go back… to the new normal. The routine we lived for the past 10-14 years has morphed and adapted into a new life, a new normal that we are now living in. The past typical fe was one that was open to new choices, where we could travel anywhere, anytime. All of our teachers and classmates were on campus, and at school, and we went to school for five days a week. It was a life that we were used to. Our old, normal life might come back in a few years, but until then, here is a new normal.

In a normal day life of a middle schooler, we have tests and quizzes weekly, but we also are allowed to gather with friends, have fun and eat anywhere during lunch. Our teachers are on campus and we see them all around. For me, this feels like it happened so long ago even though it was only a few months. The couple thinghat was different was that we didn’t have to wear masks, we didn’t have to take temperature check as we went into school, in our classrooms or even after lunch. There was no sanitizer in every corner you turn, so much has changed.

In the morning, we go into school and there is a temperature check from the nurses,  and  there is a thermal scanner set up. The minute we walk in, we can see the big staircase that has been rebuild over the summer and it is very exciting to see. Once we get into our homeroom, which is not our TARGET class, we take our temperatures…again. Most of our classes are online which take place in the homeroom class. Unlike our old school life, we don’t move around from class to class and we do not have a ten-minute break in between each class. Instead, all of our time that we did not get for a break is accumulated into one short block, break time. Another difference from our class is it is only 1 hour long. Which is about 25 minutes shorter from our normal classes.

After our classes, we have lunch. Our lunch time is usually about 45 minutes, however, we used to be able to go anywhere during lunch. Lunch inside the cafeteria is different. Instead of sitting all together in a table, we have individual tables where we can’t face our friends and classmates. And if we sit at the big tables, every other seat is blocked out because social distancing. Not only that, our lunch is also mostly disposable. We don’t have the option of having a paper box or a reusable/washable plate. We only have the paper box, and not metal spoons. But plastic.

Another difference in our day is that we don’t have after school activities anymore. Our classes are cut about 25 minutes so we can squeeze in another block. This class is mandatory, the co-curricular activities, also known as the CCAs. CCA’s give us a much bigger variety of things we can do. It can be robotics, dance, yoga, or table tennis. However, we can still do sports and that hour is where we can be with our friends doing things that we are interested in and enjoy.

Other than physical changes at our school, the pandemic has also impacted us mentally and emotionally. You might not realize it because the pandemic started so gradually, and we adapted to the change very quickly. We got used to seeing people in masks, people talking about social distancing and how we had to sit two meters apart. For me, the pandemic impacted the way my life is, how there was one additional thing that I had to do all the time. Wear a mask. And small habits like wearing masks, social distancing, sanitizing and washing your hands all the time makes life a little weirder, however we also saw other people doing it, it wasn’t just me or you. It made me feel a little better knowing that it wasn’t only me dealing in this pandemic, the entire world is. After a while, I got used to it, and I think you did too. We changed as a community, as how we dealt with our own problems. It could be hybrid learning or how online school was changing how we learned, or maybe if we were stuck somewhere that wasn’t our home, was also an experience.

And by the end of our day, we go home, thinking that our school days have changed so much however we are still at school. Being at school, and seeing our friends, teachers makes the experience at school better. And all the changes to our school just makes the day a little better knowing that, even though not all our friends and teachers are here, we still get to go to school, in a safe, clean, environment.