Online schooling has its perks for having such a negative connotation.

Welcome to online school! Where you can wake up 15 minutes before class and pull up in your pajamas and nobody would think twice of it. As we all know, Ventura Unified School District mandated an online learning curriculum for the first semester of the school year. This means daily Zoom meetings, lesson videos, homework submissions to platforms such as Canvas and Google Classroom, all concluding to a funky start to the new school year.

Sophomore Chelsea Ochoa gave her opinion on it, “School has been interesting to say the least. It’s very different but it’s nice to be able to get your work done faster and to have more time to do whatever you want for the rest of the day.” With the block schedule, there is much more freetime in our days now than what we would have in ‘normal’ school with a ‘normal’ schedule, making for a less cramped day. 

As mentioned earlier, you don’t have to wake up an hour before the first bell rings when you can wake up 15 minutes before and it could be considered early. The societal obligation to get yourself dressed in the clothes you’d normally wear is no longer apparent, so instead you can trade them out for pajamas. You don’t have to stress about having your textbooks with you when attending class because chances are they’re all sitting right in front of you — no locker needed! The only commute is walking to your computer and instead of trekking the campus from class to class, classes are now just a couple clicks away. Not to mention, this is a much safer route to take and it brings down the risk of catching COVID-19. Senior Gavin Kernagis stated, “I like online school because it gives me more free time to work and do hobbies.” Although this isn’t what we’re accustomed to, clearly students have been looking through a positive perspective.

Although like all things, there is a flip side to the coin. Kernagis spoke on his concerns as well, “Sometimes I wonder what it’s going to be like later on in the year when we start getting into more challenging topics, especially in my AP classes because we don’t get the same student teacher interaction that we would normally get in a classroom which I think is very beneficial to understanding what’s going on.” No one knows what the future holds for second semester. 

As Ochoa adds her hopes, “I’m looking forward to going back to school, competing in cross country, and seeing my friends again.” If all goes well and we all wear a mask, there’s a chance we’ll be able to go back to school on campus safely to tackle the last half of the year, so wear your masks! In the meantime, we can look at the positives in this strange predicament.