As the final days of the 2020-2021 school year are approaching, many students are looking back through this school year filled with new challenges and successes. Through those challenges, they also learnt many new lessons that have been life-changing. 

Sophomore Vanya Sagi said that her biggest challenge this school year was learning by herself away from in person school. 

“It forced me to become a more active participant in class by asking questions to teachers and requesting personal tutorials because I struggled with retaining the information,” Sagi said.  

Aside from the challenges, Sagi is able to learn many lessons about organization from this year due to the need of self-studying to learn course materials. 

“Organization became the key reason I was able to actually absorb and retain information,” Sagi said. “ I had to come up with a system to process the information we learned in class that included taking notes and making review sheets.” 

Not only were there challenges of organization for school, junior Camden Colquhoun said that there were also many challenges regarding motivation with learning online since it was hard get all of her work done while working at home. 

“ I have worked through this challenge by taking things one at a time and trying to complete a few assignments everyday to feel like I am making progress.” Colquhoun said. “Rewarding myself with breaks while I am studying has been very helpful as well.” 

Through the process of solving these challenges, Colquhoun also learnt important lessons of finding success even in the midst of tough situations that can help her in the future. 

“ As we all have heard a million times, this year has been such an unprecedented time and everyone has had to find their own way to deal with it,” Colquhoun said. “Making it through the school year has just shown that even in tough or unusual conditions, it is possible to achieve your goals.”

When the students were asked to describe their school year, Sagi said that this school year was difficult but it also gave her more time to herself and chances to be a little lazy while Colquhoun said that this year was different yet meaningful. 

“I would describe this school year definitely as different but enriching,” Colquhoun said. “While everything has been unlike years before, I have still been able to learn a lot through my online classes.”