This year is a bounce back. We lost so much the past year and a half. School, sports, clubs, concerts, etc. So much was taken away from us. Entering my senior year, I went in with the expectations that all of the school-held events would happen normally, I can go out and do fun things, but a ton of these are still involving restrictions. Coming back to school hasn’t been the easiest thing ever. Students from Naperville north have reported the stress and anxiety that they get going off the charts. They have said that teachers seem to have a lot higher expectations of us, but due to shaving off a year and a half of school, it has been a lot harder to complete homework assignments, finish tests, study, and overall just get things back into place. Personally, I have had a hard time adjusting. I know some of my teachers are understanding how hard this is for students but I know more that are expecting us to jump back into place like nothing happened besides a new accessory that people wear on their face 24/7. In the Washington Post, the state, “A year into the pandemic, counselors, and others in mental health report an increasing number of students who are depressed or anxious.” The number of students who have a mental illness has significantly increased due to the pandemic. Not only is that an issue now, but teachers are not helping students. They are hiring more staff members, such as counselors, to help the students. The workload and expectations do not change from them. Through my personal experience, school was never a thing for me. I hated waking up in the morning and going through an 8 hour day with extracurricular activities after. When covid hit and we were in the lockdown, school online became my best friend. I started to get my grades up, I got more focused, and also in the beginning it was all asynchronous work, and I had much better test scores teaching myself how to learn the material rather than being in person. Then my Junior year is when we started zoom classes with the block periods as well. Learning became something I actually did not hate as much. Doing my work and learning on my own kept me on task and made me want to participate more than my grades started to majorly increase. Coming back to in-person classes this year has been a very different experience. I did not think that classes would be easier but going from being at school for 10 years constantly to having a break in my regular schedule was a lot harder to come back from. In contrast, in the One Day article, Haanya Ijaz, states “I also think I’ve gained skills with handling procrastination and sticking to a schedule, so I should be more organized this fall. [The hardest part about online learning is] staying interested and motivated. Without sticking to a schedule, I easily fall into a cycle of procrastination and feeling down, so I have to push myself to get things done and stay on top of my responsibilities”. Compared to my experience with online classes, most people felt like they procrastinate a lot while doing school from home, which makes sense when you are in your home environment. All in all, everyone’s daily routines completely changed. School was a less consistent thing, people did not have sports or after-school activities, it was more of a lazy time period for people. Now, getting things back to what was normal for us has been more difficult than ever. The only thing we can do is help ourselves, care for the people around us, work together to help bring back normalcy, and bounce back.