Year 11

Remote LearningReflections

Year eleven

2020 shall be remembered in history as a brutal time. I am sure everyone will agree to the fact that suffering was equally shared amongst the global population. With people dying in the masses, others decided they had every right to complain about staying home and staying 1.5 metres away from other humans.

My severe lack of social skills meant that staying away from other people was quietly enjoyable, however, online learning soon taught me that humans are social creatures for a reason. Trips to the supermarket were no longer a simple 5 minute drive rather, they became a journey. The weather was noted to ensure a smooth travel, finest clothing became the norm so that the self checkout machine at Woolies would hopefully acknowledge your fashion sense and chocolate seemed to become a sizable expense on the back pocket. With nothing to do but eat and stare at a screen for hours, the puppy fat made its daunting return to taint my radiant summer body for the following months to come. Thanks to online learning, my flabby stomach was able to find refuge from the view of my peers and for the first 7 weeks of Term 2, and much of Term 3, all I had to focus on was work.

Online classes came with their many laughs and troubles as teachers tried their best to make work achievable and somewhat interesting, despite being stuck behind a screen. Many odd things began to occur that could only be described as supernatural. On the day of a test, my camera would unprecedentedly act up for the whole period. Ironically, my test scores inexplicably rose from a 70% to a 90%.

This bizarre episode of our lives proved to be full of fascinating experiences where many people realised how important certain things are. I realised that life is not simply a 5 minute trip. Life is a journey that needs to be shared with the people we care about. Look at the little things and be grateful because one day, these things will only be a distant memory.

Max Ricci

Year 11 was our first year attempting the harrowing trials of VCE and VCAL. We were all ready for some fun days of three-hour exams, constantly questioning “what the heck is the GAT” and way too much procrastinating. However, the fantastically horrible virus-that-shall-not-be-named had other plans for our year. Instead, we ended up getting 0 hours of exams in Semester 1, constantly questioned

“when the heck is the GAT” and still experienced way 136

too much procrastinating. As a result of all of these happenings, we got thrust into the university experience a few years too early, trapping ourselves in our studies and rooms to experience online learning.

We began the online learning experience by not learning anything at all as we launched straight into the quarantine holidays and suddenly found ourselves with way too much free time. Having to stay indoors for two weeks with only studying to do means that we had to fill our free time in our own way. Personally, I found refuge in self-education, deciding to spend my free time focussed on watching educational youtube videos, such as “If Harvard University Was a Girl in 30 Seconds”. However, once the holidays were over, the real trials of electronic learning began in Term 2.

Online learning was a trial by fire of everyone’s work ethic, as it would be up to us to make sure we survived. The cold, hard textbooks were no substitute for the teachers in the physical classroom, pushing us to keep going. Now, everyone knows our teachers are professionals, here to help us learn in a refined and educational environment. However, online learning has allowed all of us to see a new side to our teachers, as they inevitably have to pull away the iron curtain over their lives to educate us. Whether it was discovering Mr Young’s membership in the bourgeoisie through his AirPods or Mr Mann’s dishwasher troubles, we all got to learn more about some of our teachers and saw a more human side to them. Now, that’s enough flattery for the teachers, what about the students? Well, within some of my classes, some of us realised quickly that the only way to survive the apocalypse was, as Mad Max teaches us, to band up and create factions. During certain classes, we chose to create small personal calls, banding together to keep ourselves sane during classes, working together and just generally talking to each other and having fun. It certainly helped make the isolated experience a lot less isolated, unifying us a little in this time of obvious division.

So, in terms of online learning itself, what did it do for us? Well, that can be summarised in one word: freedom. The freedom to work at our own pace and doing tasks when we wanted them done. Unless I had a Meet during a class, instead of blindly sitting down and working, I had the opportunity to ask “do I really need to do this now”? A seemingly lazy mentality, however, they really allowed me to work in a way that was most efficient for me. If I needed a break, I took it, and if I felt like absolutely annihilating the work we had to do, it would be annihilated. As long