Cartoon by Nora Talbott

Students face several challenges at school on a daily basis such as dealing with bullies, stress and anxiety.

I started to write this at 5:32 a.m., when I got this amazing article idea and realized that two months ago at this time, I would be waking up and starting to prepare for the rest of the day. A lot of people are bored out of their minds right now during quarantine and would give anything to go back to school, but I’m not at least not for now.

Don’t get me wrong, I really miss the little things like my friends as well as our daily Starbucks runs at lunch, but I feel as if those were the only highlights of the school day. I love WJ, but at times the negatives outweigh the positives.

My introverted self loves being at home and doing online learning, where I don’t have to be in a class for a certain time period everyday and instead can learn in an environment that’s free from distractions. I finish a week’s worth of school work in the time span of five hours, at most.

It is refreshing to know that now I won’t be surrounded by malicious girls, because let’s be honest, high school girls are mean, sometimes meaner than Regina George. I’ve seen girls constantly being ridiculed and harrassed, while the mean girls gain sadistic pleasure by being so condescending. There’s an assortment of mean girls, such as girls who thrive off of spilling every little detail about other people’s lives or critics who criticize every small detail about someone just to make fun of them and bully them. Let’s be honest, girls who hate on other girls are self-absorbed and cocky. What happened to “girls support girls”?

Aside from all the mean girls, being home and doing my Google Classroom assignments, I don’t feel pressured to make pointless small talk with classmates or deal with anxiety-inducing experiences of participation, never knowing when I’ll be called on in chemistry. Being really shy and antisocial, I’m grateful I don’t have to worry at the end of every class period and mentally prepare myself to go to my next class. Before, I would lose many hours of sleep every night overthinking every small conversation or whether or not my voice cracked when I said “here” in English that day, so at least now my mind isn’t crowded with thoughts about every minor occurrence that happened that day.

Despite the large amount of pros, there are so many little things that make me want to come back. I miss my friends and taking fun classes like Pitch and Foundations of Technology. I miss going to the mall after school on Fridays and school events like GLO and football games. It’s the little things that make school enjoyable, and while I may not want to go back to school right now, I cannot wait to go back in the fall.