things happened faster than expected. on 6th march, school restricted us, the boarding students, from going anywhere off-campus without any faculty. on 7th march, school closed for one week and required us to move out and stay with our guardians (i have my brother). we were a bit annoyed with the school’s decision at first. some assumed that they just simply “kicked us out” without concerning how we will be affected. the dorm is our home in the US. some of us don’t have any guardians nearby. this, then, became a controversial issue among the boarding community.
well, i personally understood that we were all in a hard time and that every decision from the school should go along with a reasonable answer. they encouraged students to move out because they wanted to ensure that each student was safe with our guardians. in the meantime, they still kept the dorm open for those who couldn’t find other places. school closed for a week to make sure that all teachers were well-prepared for the worst situation of switching to e-learning (which actually happened). after a week off, we were required to stay at home for another month due to the increase of covid19 cases in our county. then we had spring break, and after that, one more time, we were required to continue staying at home until the end of the school year. most international students flew back to their home country but i didn’t because i already stay with my brother who was taking care of me during this pandemic. however, i came to regret this decision afterward :(
the worst situation happened and we had to switch to online learning. several changes were made in order to maximize our academic input. the first month was pretty relaxing since we didn't have any homework. school still started at 8.10am and ended at 2.35pm as usual but instead of having face-to-face classes, we attended our classes via Zoom (a formal video app). nothing changed much. after spring break, the whole system changed. we used to have 4 classes per day, now we had 3. school started at 9.00am and ends at 12pm. fun right? we got to spend less time in class but more time for homework. i loved how we had 45-minute periods instead of 70-minute ones, but i hated how we had a maximum of 60-minute homework for each subject instead of 45-minute ones. it sounds normal but it wasn’t… at all. most students were overwhelmed by the number of assignments when not getting enough knowledge from class. although we didn't learn much, our assessments and exams were extremely difficult and time-consuming. despite all the hardships, we had a lot of new experiences during this time from practicing independent learning to being more flexible in every situation. and so one of my favorite experiences was waking up 2 minutes before class started. believe me, i am not exaggerating :)
i'm also grateful for all the efforts of all the teachers and faculty. they were doing the best they could do to deliver lessons to learners. although studying online is not as effective as having in-person classes (obviously), we have to agree that something is better than nothing. i was impressed by how teachers can familiarize themselves with all the technologies and apps thingy to get ready for e-learning in only one week. i appreciated how teachers were very responsive and supportive outside their office hours. moreover, our teachers always checked in with students and asked us to give them feedback by doing a survey on a regular basis so that they can improve their teaching system. anyway, they did a great job to help us finish the school year strong.
as i mentioned before, i regretted staying in the US. let me explain to you why. at first, my parents didn't expect that covid19 would be that awful in the US. they believed the US would soon have a vaccine so it would be safer staying here. so there's nothing to say about staying here during the school year - i was doing well with online classes and i have my brother with me at home. as more time passed, the US became the country with the most coronavirus cases in the world while my country, Vietnam, had successfully dealt with the pandemic. therefore, Vietnam began to ban any flights from foreign countries from april so i didn’t have any chances of returning to my country. i should have come back earlier right? i always wait for summer to visit all my friends and relatives after a year away from home but now, at this moment, summer is ending and i'm still stuck in the US. anyway, that was it, things could be worse. every cloud has a silver lining and at least i’m still healthy during this hard time :) all in all, for those of you who are unable to come back to your country, i hope you guys are still doing great. don't forget to take care of yourself and stay safe!
i’m not sure about other schools but my school announced to reopen in august as usual the other day and the newest update is that the governor of California mandates the schools in counties that are on the watch list must use online learning. My school is in a county on the watch list so it is very likely that we will be starting with remote learning too. therefore, my school is still working on bringing boarders back to school. things have changed a lot in school, especially for the boarding community. they plan to replace some classrooms with more rooms for boarding students to make sure that everyone is socially distant by staying in their own single room and are not allowed to hang out in other rooms. this, however, sounds a little bit nonsense to me because we are going to share some facilities such as laundry machines and the bathrooms but i'm still looking forward to living in a single room and having my own privacy ;)