The online system is frustrating, period. After what seems to be seven months of mandates, like social distancing, wearing a mask, and quarantining at home, it almost feels as if this apocalyptic pandemic has no ending whatsoever. Our current lives revolve around the dependency of the internet, our computers, and social media. It would be unsurprising if one of us goes insane from sitting on a chair for almost the entire day. Despite the few advantages of online school—more hours of sleep and easily accessing your food pantry—there are certainly many flaws in our everyday virtual school environment.

Virtual Physical Education

Run a lap around the track. Sure, no problem. Run a lap around your house. Um, how? Virtual physical education is everyone’s worst nightmare; albeit, some could dispute about running a mile around the track being the worst torture. Once you’ve completed your short jog around the house or backyard, you come back to your screen and see so many breathless, sweaty faces. The room is utterly silent, and there isn’t any chatter like you’d normally expect when everyone gathers around and waits patiently for further instructions from the teacher. The trouble of physically moving around a compact room is undoubtedly everyone’s biggest challenge. Sports in physical education is unequivocally the best part of joining the class. You can encourage others, enjoy the games, and create new friendships along the way. But once the barrier of online school gets in the way of fun, it is exceptionally difficult to cherish and enjoy the physical education experience. 

Virtual Competitions

What’s it like competing in virtual competitions? Speech and debate competitions are exceptionally difficult to tackle during these unfavorable times. 

“The virtual environment is something new, something different, and something we never thought we would be in,” said sophomore Anvitha Marlapati. “Usually, during competitions, there are lots of people in a room/chamber, and sometimes the internet connection can become a huge problem. And I remember for virtual debate tournaments, it lagged, like, five seconds for each person, so that was definitely a struggle. However, I’m extremely thankful that Speech and Debate is currently happening in this virtual environment, because I thought that with the current COVID-19 pandemic, S&D would never happen.”

With the current situation and virtual competitions, it is unfortunate for many to cherish memories and celebrate a team’s victory online. However, as Anvitha mentioned, students should be extremely grateful for the teachers and organizations making every tournament possible.

Virtual Exams 

Taking tests in a virtual classroom can seem daunting and stressful. Once you enter your test window, there is no turning back, and immediately, the timer on the bottom right starts counting down until you can no longer access the test window. There is no doubt that online testing is much harder than taking a regular test in a normal school classroom; albeit, many could argue that online tests have one great advantage—using your notes! Although many students are using this advantage during online tests, we are, in fact, defeating the entire purpose of learning and quizzing ourselves. Once we return to school, we will have a much more difficult time adapting to quizzes and tests on paper. Hence, virtual exams have various flaws in terms of how it defeats the purpose of expanding our knowledge and preparing ourselves for future challenges and career exams.

Distance learning is everyone’s biggest challenge, especially during unprecedented times like these. However, maintaining motivation is our only hope of getting past the unfamiliarity of virtual classrooms. We can anticipate in a couple of months that our lives might switch back to normality.