The current pandemic of the COVID-19 has greatly affected many institutions. Major business corporations are closed and have their employees working from home. Similarly, schools have now completely switched towards remote learning. However, are students really prepared to go into the next grade level in the fall?

Although the process of remote learning has become simpler, many students feel that their learning has been incomplete and the new school year will bring a lot of extra new information towards them, which could build up significant amounts of stress.

Many students are disliking the amount of time that they are spending on completing their school work, especially when their grades cannot go lower than their baseline grade. With the changes made to the learning system, students are losing the motivation to work and keep up with the new concepts that are being introduced to them. Freshman Varsha Bharath said, “I no longer have the same dedication towards completing my work because there aren’t many deadlines that need to be met in order to maintain my A in the class.” With students not keeping up with their work right now, there will be concepts that they will be unfamiliar with as the next school year begins. This does not seem like a problem currently. However, in the fall, review of this year’s content will take away from the time to complete the material needed to learn next year. Without student effort right now, they will not be ready to jump into learning and will require buffering time to get remotivated towards completing their work.

In addition, a reason for students not being able to comprehend the amount of material that they are being given currently may also be the reflection of the workload that they are receiving from certain classes. Freshman Ramya Senguttuvan says, “I get a lot more work from school than 25 minutes per class.” The extensive amount of work given to students to figure out how to do, and that too independently, is unreasonable. Thus, with too much work on their hands, they are unable to complete all of it with their effort and eventually begin to fall behind on the calendar set by the teachers.

While current freshmen, sophomores, and juniors have at least some experience with how the high school system works, the next school year will be more of a struggle for incoming freshmen. Freshman year is a huge transition for eighth-graders as they graduate middle school and enter high school, and with unfamiliarity with the teachers and other students that are coming from different middle schools, their first year in high school can be successful if extreme hard work is put in, or simply a mess. Current eighth-grader at Pacific Cascade Middle School Neha Muramalla, says, “I think I am capable of working hard and getting grades I’m happy with, but it also seems really overwhelming and I’m scared that I’m going to regret the classes I take next year. I think I have learned enough from middle school but I still don’t really feel truly prepared, because it’s such a big jump. On a scale of 1 through 10, I would currently put myself at a 3.”

Learning any skill or idea is a process that takes as much practice as possible to master, yet always has room for improvement. Without dedication and time, perfecting new ideas that are constantly built upon as one passes each stage of school is nearly impossible With the loose system and amount of un-monitored work currently, students will not be prepared to start the next school year at the level that they are usually at.