Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there are 131 country-wide school closures with hundreds of millions of students affected worldwide according to UNESCO. With over eight hundred thousand cases in California alone, according to the CDC, hopes for schools to re-open this academic year seems grim. Students all over the country will have to endure online learning in place of the seemingly better alternative of face to face learning. While some don’t mind online learning, others simply can’t stand not being able to talk to one another. How has life changed for some of these students? Have their relationships with friends and family suffered as a result of at-home learning? To find out I have interviewed two Edison students in the hopes of gaining a better understanding of their lives at home and how the pandemic has affected them. 

According to a student named Cortez Barriente, who is currently a senior attending Edison, he states, “the pandemic has little effect for me…” and that the pandemic, “has positively affected my relationships at home with my family.” While it’s only natural for family relations to become better as at home learning continues, what about relationships with friends? Well, in Cortez’s case he states that, “I have been trying to keep contact with my friends, but not as much as I could be to be honest…people have been busy doing other stuff and I don’t want to bother them.” 

While this provides some insight on the pandemic and how it has affected relations with friends and family, that’s just one person’s experience with the pandemic, people all over the country have different circumstances that they must deal with. Another senior currently attending Edison named Ethan Lor, had this to say on how the pandemic has affected him, “The current pandemic hasn’t affected me all that much. It benefitted me as I prefer staying at home…The pandemic has affected my family though financially, but luckily, we were able to go back to work.” And in Ethan’s case, he has been able to keep in contact with his friends, stating that, “I have been keeping up with one of my friends as we help each other on assignments.” 

While relationships with friends and family may not have been negatively impacted, how has the stress from school changed as well as their academic performance? According to EducationNext.org, “Today’s students have a couple more advantages over previous generations. One is technology.” When asked about how they’ve been doing both outsides and during class they both had similar responses to the question. Cortez stated, “Life at home is a lot less stressful online…I get less school time and less homework…and what would’ve been a stressful year is a lot less so because I have more time…It’s honestly a relief.” When asked the same question Ethan stated,” School is less stressful due to me being at home not having to get ready, yet the amount of assignments the teacher give out is something I don’t particularly desire.” 

Similar responses to the same question, it seems that, at least for these two cases, the pandemic has had an overall positive impact on their well-being, management of workload, and relations with their families, with a more negative impact on their relations with friends from school. However, these are just two cases out of millions, the struggles we may be currently experiencing may be worse for others based off their circumstances. It’s important to realize this for the future as we try and do our best for ourselves and others during these hard times.