By Amanda Wayne
Leader Student Writer
COVID-19 has taken a tremendous toll on every single person, especially students. Covid has shaped our community into students into online schooling, adults working from home, wearing masks everywhere you go, and social distancing. Online school can be challenging for some students. One student I interviewed does half online and half seated at the high school, Gracie Fritsche.
Fritsche is a 17-year-old senior this year doing college courses online and at Oxford High School. She is glad to be doing mostly online school work because she believes it is safer. It also works better with her work schedule. Online classes has allowed her to have a more flexible schedule.
The lack of social interaction can have a significant effect on many students, including Fritsche. She says that a lack of social interaction can result in a lack of motivation because people generally go to school to see their friends, resulting in doing your work. Fritsche keeps her social life intact by Facetime and Zooming, and only seeing her close friends and family in person.
Another student who had similar answers to Fritsche’s was Kyla Szczepanski. Szczepanski studies Haiku online this year due to Covid. She

is concerned about Covid changing her plans to work, especially since Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer closed businesses on Wednesday, November 18.
She too is worried about not having enough motivation to do her school work. Studying and writing Haiku online helps her be more engaged with what she is learning and allows herself to have more free time. Szczepanski thinks the school has too many students only attending in-school classes and believes they should alternate between seated and online classes, which will help Covid outbreaks and keep everyone safe.
She keeps social, in a social distancing world, by only hanging out with her closest friends who are cautious around people they hadn’t hung out with before the Covid-19 outbreak.
Covid can take a dramatic toll on many students, especially younger students (seniors already don’t go to high school as much as younger students do). Cadence Teasley is a 15-year-old sophomore who goes to the Lake Orion High School. Teasley competes on the Dragon track team and hopes to get a college scholarship. She is nervous that if Covid carries on for a while it will take away her chance of getting a scholarship for track.
This semester she is taking online classes to help keep her safe from Covid outbreaks. She likes to be online because it allows her pace to stay on time and achieve better grades; along with that, it keeps her safe from getting Covid. Takeing online classes has allowed her to have more free time. This helps her stay on top of school work and hang out with close friends.
Another student who is concerned about not receiving scholarships is Colby Prais. Prais is a 16-year-old junior currently taking online classes; he is on the Oxford High School swim team.
He is concerned he won’t be able to swim this year because of Covid, which could also affect his chance of getting a scholarship. Since this is his first year taking online classes, he said it was very stressful. However, he is glad to be online this year because he has health issues, and it is safer for him to study online rather than in-class. To help with all the stress, in his free time, he Facetimes and hangouts with one or two close friends.
Covid-19 started in late 2019, affecting every person globally. Locally, students have learned to deal with this issue and overcome it. Covid-19 has changed our lives forever into wearing masks everywhere, being cautious about everything, not doing as much as we used to, and more. Students and adults have learned new ways to live with this issue, and it is working.

  Amanda Wayne