With school starting back up after being closed in the spring, there’s no question everything else in the world right now it’s just different. The two biggest changes have been the schedule and the new mask requirements. At Farmington High School students have been less than ecstatic about wearing masks.

It “takes a second to get used” to wearing the masks, says Kimball Yates, but once you do they’re really just an inconvenience. The general feeling is that they “get in the way”.  In a discussion with my good friend Kimball Yates I was told “the mask doesn’t ruin my day but taking it off certainly makes it” 

  Despite all the complaints against masks, most students prefer wearing masks over having school online. A lot of students found pure online school really difficult–learning from home was difficult without a teacher there to help you out. Procrastination got the best of many students, when faced with Summit’s relaxed deadlines. On top of that, there was almost no break between school days. After finishing a long paper, or finally passing a PFA after 6 tries you couldn’t go wind down at Fiiz with friends or play a friendly match of Call of Duty Zombies. 

The presence of friends (with appropriate social distancing) is one of the biggest advantages of being at the school over doing online. As Kimball put it “it just hits different”. When we can talk to our friends in class or while walking down the hall it just makes school a little better. 

Because of the alternate days, students were given a choice to switch the days they went to school. Many students sought to switch the days they’d go to school for a variety of reasons. Kimball remarked that while many of his friends switched days to be with their group, he just didn’t want to make the change. He decided that school was only twice a week, whether all his friends were with him or not wasn’t too important. In the end his biggest motivator to stay with his group, was to avoid the Mondays.