For most, if not all, it’s clear that Covid-19 has become part of the everyday lives of students and staff at Curtis High School. With the virus still exceedingly present throughout the world, the reality that we as a school community have come to know has obligated us to grow accustomed to our new way of education: remote learning. Whether you’re in the fully remote or blended group, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that this academic year, in general, has been a journey unlike any other. 

   With that being said, students have found this journey to be immensely strenuous and tiring. Students are required to wake up bright and early and immediately hop on their laptops, iPads, or even phones to attend classes online and complete assignments. These devices can be very straining on the eyes and even cause headaches, which makes spending hours in front of a screen to complete assignments a task in itself. Arianna Prempeh, a junior, wrote that “Remote learning has been difficult for many students, and finding the motivation to even be awake for a class is truly very hard.” Students also tend to stay up later than usual because they are aware that there aren’t a lot of preparations needed to get ready for remote learning the next day. But this only causes additional fatigue and stress because they have to find some way to make up for the hours of sleep they lost. In this way, a literal domino effect occurs because with this fatigue comes less energy and motivation to do the work asked of them.

   Recently, students have also been struggling with the extremities of their mental health. They found that the demands of online school were greater compared to years past. The workload has increased, which also increased the amount of energy students have to apply to their work on a day-to-day basis. Kiani Danielle, a sophomore, says that “The lack of communication between teachers and students with the added workload is stressful and draining” which contributes significantly to a student’s current mental state. Mental health is no joke at all and should be considered just as important as completing schoolwork, but it’s hard to maintain this balance with remote learning, meaning the sense of fatigue comes crawling up on students once again.