By: Musab Mohamud

While COVID-19 has been sweeping across the globe, schools, religious sites, and sports venues have been shut down. Even that is an understatement, as it seems the world has been put on hold by the fear of this dangerous virus.

Saint Paul Public Schools were postponed in early March of 2020, which according to many students feels like it was many years ago. A quote taken from one student reads, “It feels like we’ve been gone for a lot longer than 18 months. I had to find other ways to communicate with my friends because I couldn’t meet with them in the early months of lockdown.”

Another common theme with the students I interviewed was their fear of getting sick without prior knowledge of the virus. During the first spike of COVID many doctors and health officials were still scrambling to find the cause and nature of the virus. You can only imagine what kind of effect this would have upon an uninformed student base.

Many students across the district suffered lower grades during asynchronous and online school. The principal of Highland Park Senior High had to implement methods of credit recovery, which would ensure every student could receive their credits. One quote that pertains to this subject is: “I really had trouble keeping up with the work we received at the end of freshman year because I had no face-to-face connection with my teacher.” This is a sentiment shared by many students across the school. While online school made things a great deal easier, many students still struggled without a school presence.

Even now, during In-person classes, people are still in resentment of the mask rule and would love to see their friends’ faces. With many different perspectives upon the impact that COVID had upon students, a common answer is a resounding negative impression about it.