Philippines – Mary Elisha Rodriguez
Online learning has a different vibe from face to face classes. I feel like there are a lot of factors that tempt me to not listen to online classes, but thankfully I don’t fall for those temptations. I definitely think I would do better in person learning. There are just many more opportunities when we learn face to face. In my school, whenever we would have our midterms or finals when most of the class has a low score, our teacher would give us this test to help us increase our scores in the finals. I feel like that’s what we need for online learning because students have been very inefficient. It’s just better for learning and everything. In face to face learning we’re forced to listen but here we don’t know if the students are actually listening to the teachers.
We’ve gotten way more assignments than in person learning. My school has three terms and we just had our first term and during our term break right before starting term two I thought they would give us less work. But no, first week of school we already had a presentation and it was just nerve wracking. My Filipino teacher grades on a whole different level. His tests are hard, his essays are hard. I just can’t explain how much I don’t like that teacher. But I still have to go to his class to pass school. He does say that we’re in quarantine and we should stay positive but right after he gives us five assignments and the deadline is like tomorrow. I feel like some of his deadlines are understandable and some of them aren’t. I love my English teacher, he’s really funny. He teases my friends because he knows they like each other. We also somehow rant to him and he listens to our problems. He’s a nice teacher.
I haven’t been able to go out and if I don’t go outside by March then it will already be a year since I haven’t stepped outside the house. But my friends have gone out to malls and I always get jealous, but I mean sometimes you have to do what you have to do. In the Philippines minors aren’t allowed to go out but I guess [my friends] can get away with it because they’ve grown taller. Adults can go out and get groceries with a mask on but minors aren’t allowed to step out.
When there were typhoons, there was a place that got struck twice. So those two typhoons hit Luzon specifically the Bicol region and the higher parts of Manila. Those were the ones that got affected. After the typhoon I saw on social media that my friends were donating things to the victims and our school also encouraged us to do that. Because of the typhoons there was no electricity for a few days which also obviously affected online school. The place I live in didn’t get hit fortunately but we still had to stop school for a while. They had to suspend school for about two to three days as per government orders.
One good thing that has happened because of Covid is that I’m sure of what I wanna be when I grow up in the future. Because as a person, I like to think ahead and me knowing what I wanna do and me knowing what profession I wanna take up is a really big choice for me. Before Covid I was very busy and had a lot of work so I didn’t have time to think about things on a deeper level. But ever since Covid I was like “Why not think about it?”. So after looking at things from a different perspective I was more clear of what I wanted to do with my life and I want to become a psychiatrist.
In the future when Covid does hopefully die down the first thing I want to do is go to the mall. I used to go to the mall every weekend with my family and I want to do that again. Hopefully by 2021 by the time I go to grade 9 all of this can settle down a little.