Anna Avgerinos/Staff reporter

It’s been two years since the COVID-restrictions were lifted and school has gone back to normal. Schools everywhere may have said goodbye to the quarter system and distance learning, but students are still struggling to re-adjust to the new norm.

Although the restrictions are almost gone and the pandemic seems to be ending, stress levels have only risen. With schools going back to normal schedules and teaching, some students struggle with re-adapting to regular school life.

A lot of students had their first high school experience in COVID, with either the full-on distance learning and the quarter system, or the mandated masks and changes in teaching strategies to satisfy the regulations for the pandemic.

So far, teachers at Gleneagle have been doing an exceptional job at re-adapting and assisting students in doing the same. “What [teachers] have been doing is pretty great,” said Megan Lockwood, grade 9, “and they’ve been really understanding for the most part.”

During the quarter system, homework, tests, and projects were a lot more stressful with deadlines and miscommunication between students and teachers.

“The hardest part for me was the lack of interactions between students and teachers,” said Lockwood. “There is usually a connection, but with masks and social distancing, there was a lack of it.” Learning from home was a struggle for many, with having to learn how to work teams to struggling with solving simple homework problems.

Recently with rising COVID cases and hospitalizations, there has been the suggestion about past restrictions returning, such as distance learning and masks being mandated. But are the restrictions returning a good thing or a bad thing? In most cases, students are hoping for distance learning to stay in the past because of multiple reasons.

“The self-isolation aspect really ruined abilities to communicate and problem solve outside of this little screen,” said Lockwood, who spent most of her isolation at home alone, figuring out how to work teams and hand-in her assignments.

This pandemic has been drawn out for a very long time, and even as numbers of the infected and killed have dropped dramatically, many still worry for their own safety and the safety of their family. But schools going back to normal has made the change a lot easier for the younger generation.