2023 I BelongMagazine.com Digital by UniFIED Efforts, Inc.

I play lacrosse at school. Because of Covid we had just enough teammates to be able to play lacrosse. I am thankful that we even got to play at school. Many people had to quarantine because family members or even they themselves had positive test results. For everyone's safety, we had several precautions, such as, if you came into contact with anyone with the virus, traveled out of state, etc., you would have to be quarantined. This led to cancellation of games. All of these precautions were slightly hard to achieve this season. Wearing a mask made it hard to breathe during a game. It was a change for everyone, but we were able to adapt and continue our season. But at home it was very hard for me to adapt to the change. The level of concentration needed for virtual learning has been very difficult for us students. Also, there are several distractions that come from being on a computer. From my personal experience it has been very hard to retain any of the information that I have learned online. According to Education Next , the state recorded test scores have had a tremendous decline over the past year. It can be very hard trying to focus on one thing online. Students start to do things like online shopping, YouTube, and game playing. While doing these, the student could be missing out on instruction time and fall behind in the lesson. Health outcomes were the most impacted for me. Looking at a computer screen all day affects your eyes terribly. That was the hardest part for me because being in the dark trying to focus on either a book or screen hurt my eyes from straining them all day. My eyes were hurting all the time, and I had massive headaches. My eyes made me feel very dizzy, and the only time I got away from the screen was to sleep or practice lacrosse. Also, having varying amounts of homework and even an overlap of class work led to stress. I started to struggle to finish all of my assignments at once.

How the Pandemic Affected Me in School

By Kamille Simmons How do students feel about this past pandemic? I can answer that question from my perspective. Here are my thoughts.

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