School has just started around the country and people are adapting to it in different ways. Some schools are hybrid, where students can go to school in-person on certain days and the other days online. Some schools have chosen to incorporate both students online and in-person by teaching some virtually and some in the classroom at the same time, while some are entirely online for the fall semester. This has become the new way of learning for students in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. 

Although online learning has been seen as a negative factor of returning to school because of the complications that arise from it and students missing their friends, there are some benefits we can focus on to discover for ourselves. This is the first time students are on their own, and for seniors this could be seen as a preparation for college and having to do things on their own. 

Being online, you immediately recognize the best way you learn. Some students realized they were good at learning on their own with some teacher help, and were well motivated to continue doing work when their teachers allowed them to exit the Google Meet or Zoom call. However, some students also learned that they are not as self-motivated as they thought they were, or could not focus enough on the class to learn anything while working online.

Personally, I realized that I like learning online and after experiencing both in-person and online learning, I definitely prefer online learning more. At home, I was able to minimize distractions easily by eliminating them and able to focus on the assignment given. On the contrary, when I attended school in-person I was easily distracted with my other classmates by wanting to talk to them instead of doing my work. Realizing that everything I was doing at school could have been done at the comfort of my own couch made me unmotivated to continue completing assignments at school. 

However, many students do not share the same opinion as I. There are some who need to remain in-person because they learn better with a teacher in front of them. Additionally, there are too many distractions for them at home to focus, such as younger siblings, or the desire of not wanting to get up from their bed. Their WiFi may not be the strongest or they do not have it at all so they cannot work adequately with the technology given. Their parents may not feel comfortable with them returning to school so they have to remain learning online, but they aren’t able to learn adequately at home. 

Working from home has given us the opportunity to experience how it would be like to work from the comfort of our own home as if we lived in an alternative reality. We don’t have to be stuck in traffic hoping we aren’t late for school or work. We don’t have to worry about being tardy to a place when we work online–unless someone accidentally oversleeps or has connection issues. I know I do not miss walking home from school and wasting thirty minutes every day.

Learning online also lets us do things around the home on our own. You never have to ask to use the restroom, unless your computer is mounted to the ground and you have the privilege of eating whatever you want whenever you want. You also aren’t surrounded with noisy classmates and can only hear your teacher speak instead because everyone else is muted.

If you finish a class early and the teacher allows you to leave early, you can do other activities such as work on another assignment for another class or complete chores so that you don’t have to do them later on. You could even take a quick nap if you had the time and confidence of waking up in time for the other classes. 

School this year will be very different from the past years, but there are always bright sides of alternative ways of learning if you try to find them. This is the first time ever that we won’t have to attend school in person if we don’t want to, and we could all learn a couple things about ourselves and know how to apply that to our lives in the future.