2020 has been a year full of new experiences and lessons. We all learnt a lot during this very eventful year. The COVID-19 pandemic which forced us all to isolate ourselves also involuntarily made us learn many new things and to take up new hobbies so we wouldn’t end up like Jack Nicholson in the ‘Shining.’

Since we all were stuck in our homes, we would have had to come up with different and new ways of doing certain things. One of these is taking online classes.

Going to school has been a common practice from aeons ago. Although schools are the designated places of learning, it’s not the main reason we go to school. Sure, the education we receive in Maths, History, Science classes and so on, are extremely important, going forward in life, as it helps shape your career and all the other boring adult stuff. But the main reason we like school is the experience it creates. The atmosphere created when going to school cannot be replicated at any other point in life. It’s special and unique. We get to meet our friends on a daily basis, play sports, take part in some activities like swimming and so on.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I don’t wish for a holiday or try my best to avoid going to school, but we have to get educated and going to school seems to make it more bearable.

Then along came the disaster movie known as 2020 and its leading actor COVID-19. The pandemic completely changed everything we do in our day-to-day lives and school was no exception. Children all over the world were left wondering if they would fall behind a year since they couldn’t go to school. The only practical solution was, regrettably, online classes.

The bane of the modern schoolchild, online classes, took out all the fun of going to school and have focused only on the least likeable (important but not the best) part of school - the learning. We are forced to sit in front of our laptops and computers for hours (damaging our poor and weary eyeballs) and just study and study and study. We are unable to pass the time in any way as our every movement and action can be seen by the teacher. Talking to our friends are all things of the past. Sometimes, you get caught and are made to get out of class (which is deemed a punishment and I don’t understand why). We can’t even point out and laugh if someone does something embarrassing. Imagine a child’s disappointment, when they see a kid picking their nose and they can’t point it out and laugh at it, with their friends. Propping up textbooks and sleeping off behind will soon become forgotten. 

We cannot even give the ever-reliable excuse of leaving our homework at home when asked whether we have done it. That feeling you get when you hear the final bell ring and you know you get to go home can’t be compared to the sound of you leaving a Google meet or a Zoom call.

As it is, it is hard for people to listen in normal classes, but somehow online classes make it much tougher. As much as teachers try to make the classes interesting, there is something about the online classes which makes it unable to be enjoyed. Perhaps it’s the fact that we sit like mindless zombies in front of a screen.

Whatever the reason, there’s no point in us just complaining about it as it seems as though we will be stuck in here for some time. So, we just have to bear with this online school, which is, probably, Shakespeare’s greatest unpublished tragedy.