Tseng (’24) Enters High School in Daunting New Virtual World
Entering high school can be a terrifying experience. From starting a new school, to higher standards, to dealing with the daunting upperclassmen, this scary new year is the beginning of one of the most important chapters in life.
Many students can recall their experience as wide-eyed freshmen walking through the gates of Del Norte for the first time, and Del Norte’s class of 2024 is about to go through the same thing. However, with the added bonus of being in the middle of a pandemic, trying to navigate the campus and finding your classrooms suddenly becomes finding a new background for your zoom meetings. The high standards suddenly become extra stressful from being stuck at home all day. Dealing with the daunting upperclassmen suddenly becomes dealing with frightening headlines about rising cases, explosions in third world countries, and news about the upcoming election. What once was mindless scrolling through social media has now transformed into feeds filled with world news.
Chloe Tseng (’24) shared her perspective on beginning the 2020-2021 school year online.
Besides being in her first year of high school, Tseng is also on the cheer team. She likes to constantly be doing something, and has filled up her freetime with technology. Tseng shares how she feels about entering high school. Before the pandemic had taken over, she mentioned how she spent a majority of eighth grade eagerly waiting for the year to end saying, “I was just like ‘I’m ready to get out of here!’”. The changing school environment as a result of the pandemic leaves anxiety for the years ahead. Tseng mentions how “it’s a bit more unsure, [and how] it feels like less of a big change because we were doing online school to begin with”.
Tseng mentions a little about her experiences with distance learning at the end of last school year. Tseng and her friends were on top of things, forming a group chat only days before school was sent home. She mentioned how this mere coincidence helped them stay in contact with each other and get closer. Although communication remained strong among her friends, Tseng believes it proved the biggest hurdle academically: “A lot of times the teachers have so many kids to take care of, and they’ve never done this before. So it was kind of hard to get directions and it was definitely different”.
The changing learning environment provides another obstacle for freshmen. Tseng claims prior to school going fully online, her family already chose the Virtual Learning Academy for the school year. She explained, “We miss our friends, we miss seeing people and talking to people face to face”, and to her family the VLA seemed like the best option in order to return as close to normal life as possible as soon as possible.
Although the online academy assures the safest return to school, there are many events that typically occur in person that Nighthawks are going to miss out on this year. Tseng leaves her two-cents explaining the things she was most looking forward to: “Friends, talking to people, getting to see people that you wouldn’t see outside of school”. Additionally, she mentions she was excited to attend her first homecoming, and cheer on our football team.
Tseng testifies that the pandemic only adds to the uncertainty in the transition from middle school to high school, “I’m just kind of wondering how it’s going to be different… what the workload is going to be like, but obviously people can’t say because nobody really knows”. Many aspects that have embodied our campus life will be unknown to this year’s freshmen. For Tseng, this unknown includes freshmen orientation. Orientation is one of the biggest aids and is an important introduction to high school. A day full of meeting new friends, exploring the campus, and lots and lots of ice breakers.
This new school setting is uncharted territory for many freshmen and Nighthawks. Nevertheless, let’s make the most out of the next four months, and create something worth remembering.