Virtual learning has lost experiences and gutted Barons the chance to participate in extracurriculars. The summer gives Barons a chance to remake the lost experiences and delve into hobbies they didn’t have time for during the school year.
With California opening up, here are what Barons missed from in-person school and what they’re doing over the summer.
All photos are provided.
“I hope to regain connections with my peers when we start to physically see each other again. I miss the student-teacher bond we take for granted while we learn in the classroom. I’ll miss waking up late and doing classwork in bed. I miss club bonding and making new friends! Especially because I’m involved in more clubs this year, I want to try to make my experiences as memorable as possible. But, it’s not that easy when you’re staring into your computer, and it totally makes sense. I’m just so excited to be coming back again to gain the experiences that I’ve lost due to this year!” sophomore Sa Nguyen said.
“This summer I will be involved in sports such as football and wrestling and potentially track if given the proper time and space to get all three done. I also hope to go back to in-person school and get involved with the normal flow of school again. In-person school would be good to get back on track to a normal routine and how life has been every year except these last two. I think having the proper time in between classes, sports, and extracurriculars this next year will make people more inspired to do their best,” sophomore Caine Elroy said.
“Frogwarts is a camp in the Midwest about creativity where you go to a campsite and eat/sleep/do activities there. Each age group is given two prefects who take us to classes/activities like the pool or hiking. We eat and participate in house games with our houses: Selkie-clan, Terratribe, Morningstar, and Dragonwing. Everyone at camp knows each other, and I personally have been going for nine years. Since most of the people haven’t seen each other since last summer, arriving at camp and seeing everyone is super fun. There are so many traditions and aspects to the camp that make it extremely unique, like open mic night, night scavenger hunts for the older kids,” sophomore Zuri Sherry said.
“I’m planning to take three classes at both [Golden West College] and [Fountain Valley High School] during the summer. I will also play both tennis and volleyball as well. Next year, I’m hoping for school to go back to normal and am planning to take a few extracurriculars to pass the time. I hope I get to learn more and be more hands-on next year. This year, I wasn’t able to be fully engaged in school due to it being online. School felt like a chore rather than a place of learning. As a freshman, I think I missed out on plenty of new opportunities that high schoolers usually get to experience. However, I think I’ll still miss online school, due to how much easier it was than in person,” freshman Caitlyn Year said.
“I am taking the coding class and the criminal justice class through an online program. Criminal justice has always been interesting to me, learning about different cases. I find it interesting to learn why a criminal did what they did and how others responded to it. I don’t really know how the system works, like the different degrees of punishment depending on the crime but I am hoping to learn more!” sophomore Taila Lemmons said.
“I’m looking forward to playing badminton over the summer! Couldn’t play this year because of COVID but looking forward to being back on the court. Next year, I would really like to hang out in school with my friends because it was fun to do random things with them!” sophomore Alex Nguyen said.
“This summer is going to be super busy with activities and extracurriculars because I have sports training to do for basketball, getting my permit for driving, hanging out with friends, working at my parents’ company and a lot of other fun stuff! But the most important activity that I’ll be doing this summer is catching up on sleeping! Also for next year, I think it’ll be even better than this year and everything will be back to normal. Along with next year, I believe that everyone will be super excited and motivated to go to school since they can see all of their friends and teachers again and all of the fun school activities will be back!” sophomore Lauren McCormick said.
