What I had hoped for, no?
It was a Thursday in mid-March and rumours of President Macron’s potentially grandiose speech were swarming in all the lycées of France.
There was a climate of apprehension — as though we all knew what the outcome of his speech would be but were too embarrassed to vocalise our joy. Macron announced that evening the closure of all educational facilities. And I couldn’t help but feel a guilty smirk spread across my face. At the time, a slow descent into perennial laziness felt welcome.
“This is what you had hoped for, no?” Mum asked.
My smile vanished, ceding its place to an expression of simple acceptance. It wasn’t long until social media was saturated with jubilant posts and stories celebrating the switch to online learning. During the first few days, I felt an exciting sense of novelty. The first day was a breeze and I thought I’d never been so relaxed.
It was true. I spent the first week of online school euphorically flying through my classes. Sitting all day on my chair and jumping from video conference to video conference seemed so exciting and easy. For most classes, I slumped back into my chair while listening to introductory lectures and being dismissed to complete assignments.
But the novelty soon started to wear off. I began to feel the complacency. The buzzing of the videoconference notification became deeply annoying, and I couldn’t help but let out a sigh of frustration every time it peeked out on the side of my screen. I directed my frustrations towards the teacher favorite Microsoft OneNote — a digital portfolio for students to organize their work. At first, I thought it was useful and innovative, but then it became an exercise in online school tyranny. With my reduced fish-like attention span, I began neglecting to upload my work. I was keeping up with lessons but forgetting to turn in assignments.
Schools in France are slowly returning to in-person learning. The primary students have returned first, and will be followed by the secondary students in a few weeks. There is a rotation for students to go to school on set days — “Group C” goes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. But I’m still at home. It’s not clear if the students in my year will be able to go to in-person classes or not.
Now I feel a cycle of mismatched emotions. When I wake up, there is a sense of anger. At lunch, a feeling of freedom because I can stand up and walk around. During the evening, a sense of relief emerges. But as one day blends into the next, relief is quickly replaced by annoyance again.
It’s not what I had hoped for.