Reedy has been through many changes over the past few years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many students at Reedy have switched from virtual school to in person for the 2021-2022 school year because there was no option for virtual school this year. As you can imagine, this was a tough change for many students after being homebound for a year.

“In virtual school, we had breakout rooms and no one really knew each other, so they wouldn’t talk,” said junior Avin John. “In in-person, group work is better because we interact with more people and try to make new friends.”     

While many people appreciate the social aspect of school, it has been difficult to adjust to the large student body at Reedy.

“The hardest part to adapt to is probably the congestion in the hallways more than anything, especially in C-hall.” said junior Manish Rangan. “There’s just so much clutter of people. I know that it’s been fixed recently, but it’s still something hard to adapt to”

Students also struggle to deal with the new COVID-19 safety measures.

 “Last year, there were new lunches, new bell schedules, and a lot of the regulations or a lot of the timings weren’t explained as well.” said senior Mishall Qureshi.

Although some are struggling to adjust to the change they still enjoy in-person school.

“The best part of in-person school is that I get to collaborate with more people and talk to my teachers and build more relationships.” said sophomore Saiesha Sawhney

When given the choice between virtual and in-person many would choose to stay in person.

“I would definitely not go back to virtual, because all my friends are here and you just lose that personal connection which is always superior,” said Rangan.

Last year online school was hard for many people because they lost the person to person connection.

“Obviously in-person is much more lively, you can talk to people and sit with them at lunch, and you can’t have that kind of fun online.” said junior Sarthak Choudhary “You can’t really talk to people with a screen and in reality no one actually turns their cameras on so it was pretty boring.”  

In-person and online school both have pros and cons but people are adapting to the change to make the new school year go as smoothly as possible.