Every time a new semester starts, students face this problem. After two weeks of relaxing at home, who remembers their schoolwork? It always takes a little bit of time to re-adjust, but it is much, much worse now that the classes we are returning to are the ones we haven’t worked on in three months.

   I barely remember anything from my first quarter classes because so much time has passed since then. It’s just not easy to completely switch from one set of classes to another with no time to transition.

 Already, we’ve been given intense workloads. I can’t count the number of quizzes I’ve had to take so far, most building off of ideas introduced three months ago. Quizzes and tests, projects and papers, all this work is a normal part of academic life. But we’re going through it so quickly and there’s so much to remember. It’s just overwhelming. 

   It’s a difficult situation for everyone. Students are stressed because we have so much work we have to remember, but it’s not the fault of our teachers. They are forced to go quickly in order to get everything done in the shortened time period, which means we have less time to review. I wish there was more of a transition back to our first quarter classes for third the quarter. It might not be possible to do that and have enough time to get through everything we need to, but I know even a short review session would make me and other students feel more comfortable with our workloads. It might be tempting to blame our problems on the block schedule that split up our classes in the first place, but it does enable us to have a safer in-person school experience with fewer people in direct contact with each other. We’re all trying our best to get through this difficult time, and we all need to be supportive and understanding.