Hey y’all. Welcome to Fast Facts for Gen Z. I’m your host, Callie, and I don’t know anything about anything. Come with me while I explore the world, and I’ll tell you everything you ever, and never, wanted to know, through the eyes of Gen Z.
Today’s episode: a continued reflection on the online format of the 2020-2021 school year, and wondering what the end of school means for me.
I’m jumping the gun on my reflection a little bit; I don’t graduate for another month. But as the year winds down and classes shift into review for exams I’m not taking, I find myself metaphorically staring out the window in class, sifting through feelings and memories of the past and present. Metaphorically, of course, because there’s no window to stare out of – the windows in my bedroom are covered by dark curtains in a futile attempt to prevent being backlit on Zoom. It’s difficult to reconcile my feelings of strangeness with my understanding that this has become normal to me now. I mean, at this point, it feels so overdramatic to reiterate how strange and challenging this year has been. We get it, you know? We’re all living it. It’s been normal for me for long enough that sometimes I forget how strange it is.
The few times I’ve had to go to the school in person, I walked cautiously through hallways and examined classrooms intently that I used to dash between on muscle memory alone. I had to stop and ask someone where a teacher’s classroom was, because they had switched classrooms in the time I’ve been in online school. It’s jarring to walk through a place you used to know so well and realize that your memories of it are all but locked away. It’s jarring to realize that even though you haven’t officially left school yet, it left you a long time ago. It was almost like being a former student coming back to say hi to teachers. Almost, but not quite. I’ve tried to find the right words for it, but the closest I can come is that I felt like a ghost.
On the bright side, feeling uncomfortable in a setting that used to be normal tells me that I have actually adjusted to my new situation. This is especially interesting to me because I thought I was fairly well-adjusted by the middle of last semester, but listening back to episode 16: A Reflection on Online School, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I published it at the end of October of 2020, so it was a few months into the school year. A few months into online school. Reading through my thoughts from then – whew, y’all getting some serious Callie introspection here – I have so much love and compassion for her. “Her” being October me. My thoughts were so scattered, and I was trying so hard to pull them together and make sense of them. I was under so much stress. So much distress. And I knew that at the time, but it was hard to acknowledge the intensity of my feelings. I tried to label the challenges that online school presented to me in order to better understand them – “name it to tame it,” as we say – and I managed to label all of them but the most difficult ones. The things I did name, like the lack of sensory input, being stuck staring at my laptop all day, and the constant stress of technical difficulties, those were all real challenges that did and do cause me stress, but I was using them to deflect what was going on internally.
In reality, I was missing my friends so much. I was stressing about college stuff. I hated my classes and didn’t know what to do about it. I was super stressed out about the election and I wasn’t taking care of myself when it comes to social media and the news cycle. I was at the point in the pandemic where I was still super stressed about it, but it felt silly to say that because shouldn’t I be used to it by now? I still feel all of those things. Except hating my classes. I don’t hate my classes this semester the way I did last semester. I’m much less stressed about the pandemic now, though. I’m fully vaccinated and so is everyone in my family. Obviously, the vaccine doesn’t wipe away all worry, but it alleviates a lot of the stress. I’m not changing my lifestyle at all, really, not until I start working during the summer. But the stress is significantly better now. Funny. My October self had no idea that we would have access to a vaccine. I remember thinking, “maybe school could go back in session if there were a vaccine. That’s a long shot though. Not gonna happen.” I was right that the vaccine didn’t come in time for school to go back to normal, but there is a vaccine. Several, in fact. And they work. Back in October, I had dared to hope, but I did not dare to assume that would be the case. So much distress, so much uncertainty. But I got past it! Past it and through it.
You know, I’ve spent so much of this year living in the present. Even in planning for college and planning for the future, it’s all been like, “okay, today I have to fill out my health information. I wonder when I can apply for housing? Doesn’t matter, they’ll tell me and I’ll do it then.” Just taking each day as it comes. Every day I go to my classes for that day, I have my little to do list of things I need to do that day, I log off my Zoom calls and do things for that day. Very much in the right now. And it’s interesting because that’s what people always tell you to do to be happier, right? Don’t worry about the future and don’t dwell on the past, live in the moment. So I don’t think this is a bad thing, necessarily, just interesting. Because as the year winds down and I find myself excited for it to be over, I often forget to think about what, exactly, is ending. It’s not just the end of a school year, it’s not just the end of a very weird and hard school year, it’s the end of all my school years. Well, I guess I’m going to college, so technically not all. But all my public school, K-12 years. Which, you know, is both a big deal and not a big deal. It happens to nearly everyone, so it’s not like my experience is somehow unique and special and different. But it is unique and special and different within the context of my own life – I’ve never done this before. So… I guess I should reflect on… growing up?
Obviously I’m not entirely grown up, and I don’t feel that way, and from what I’ve heard, I won’t feel that way for a really long time, if ever. Which is okay. But if we’re talking about “growing up” in a technical sense – moving through childhood and adolescence and entering adulthood – then I’m almost done with it. I’ve been in the same school district the entire time, so I’ve been around basically the same group of peers for what, thirteen years? Give or take some people here and there. It’s been a fairly decent group for me, but I’m looking forward to moving on and meeting new people. You know, getting out of the hometown, expanding your horizons, meeting different types of people, all that. I am excited for that. I think part of that feeling comes from just being ready for new things, but I think another part comes from already being pretty separated from my peers. There’s no social interaction in online school, at least not in my classes. Students don’t talk to each other. Even in those few classes where more than one person has their video on, that’s more for interacting with the teacher than each other. When I text people who I used to be friends with these days, it sounds like we’ve already gone off to college and are trying to catch up. “Hey! How are you? What have you been up to? How are your classes? Okay cool! Bye!” I’d still call them friends but that feels inaccurate at this point. They’re my high school friends.
But I’m still in high school! Weird. I remember thinking about this in Episode 32: Transitions and Trusting Yourself. I feel both prepared and unprepared, both already moved on and still stuck in one place, one foot in and one foot out. Maybe that’s just me being checked out in the second semester of my senior year, which would be understandable. I think it’s just been accelerated or emphasized by the disconnectedness I’m already experiencing and have been experiencing since March 2020.
I keep coming back to thoughts about how online school is different now from the way it was last semester. I just think that everybody has adjusted better. The teachers are better at structuring lessons, at least for the most part. I’ve adjusted to the schedule and have gotten better at budgeting my time in a way that allows me to complete everything, or at least everything that feels important, and keep up with things outside of school. This podcast, for one. Volunteer work. Work work. College stuff! There’s so much college stuff to do, all the time. A form today, an email tomorrow, a scholarship award (or rejection) the next day. It’s so much! I mean I get that they need a lot of information, but couldn’t this have been, like, a packet? Instead of everything broken out in to little pieces? Seriously, I always feel like I might be missing something. Especially because my college and my sister’s college are doing things at different paces and different ways. It’s not an actual problem that needs solving, I’m just picking apart little bits of things that add to stress.
But school! I was talking about school. I’ve fallen into a relatively comfortable routine. I go to first period, do my work, and typically leave class early once I’m finished. My allotted time for lunch is between first and second period, so I go downstairs and eat lunch. Then second period, which is a really nice class. Well, nice might not be the right word. A really good class. I learn a lot. Third period is my one AP class, and when we were still doing new content, it was my worst class. No offense to the teacher, though he probably agrees. It was just hard, and we went fast, and I didn’t, like, particularly care about the content. Right now, we’re in exam season and our exam is coming up, so we’re just doing review and practice exams, so no new content. I’m not even taking the exam, so I’m doing the review without worrying too much about whether I’m doing it right or not. Which is nice. Like I said, the year is winding down. And it feels calmer. We’re past college decision day and past new content in most classes, so that takes away a lot of stress and rushed feelings. Once AP exams are over, many of my friends and the people in my classes will breathe another sigh of relief. And then it will end. Those calmer, slower feelings are nearly tangible.
Instead of frantically writing shorthand notes and carefully monitoring my facial expression so no one can tell exactly how frantic my writing is, I sit at my desk and doodle circles on a notecard and watch the flowers on my desk wilt as they near the end of their blooming cycle. There could be something poetic about it: the end of a flower’s time coinciding with the end of my time in school. But then again, it’s just a flower. I’ll take it outside when it’s done blooming. And then I’ll come back inside, finish school, and continue on. It’s a figurative ending, you know? The Earth keeps turning at the same pace. Life will be different, but not all that different. All this is to say, I think I’m done with high school. I think I’ve probably been mostly done with it for a while. And as the year wraps up, my feelings on high school wrap up as well.
Thank you for listening to Fast Facts for Gen Z. I release new episodes every single Thursday, except when I release them on Friday, so follow this podcast to make sure you never miss one. This is Callie, signing off.
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