Procrastination
By Livia Chiu
Procrastination. If I were to describe my COVID schooling I would use that word. It’s such a simple word, fun to say, but sums up so much on what I did. I sleep, procrastinate, and then pull all-nighters, it’s a vicious cycle I don’t know why I do. I stare at the work and say I’ll do it later. But I never do I always have a general idea of what I want to do for the assignment, I just don’t want to you know, do it. I procrastinate on the little things I don’t enjoy doing in life as well, and it always comes back to hit me in the back. I’ve lost sense of time, all the days mush into one and I find myself taking periodic naps between classes only to wake up and panic about the time. If I were, to sum up, COVID for me, it would be procrastinating my life away and later question why do I do this, I love the class but I lack the drive. And I lay in bed doing work for the rest of the night.
Course Reflection
By Jolynn Tripi
Participating in the Current History Publications class this trimester was tough to manage, but in the end very rewarding. Taking this class taught me time management and the importance of deadlines. Writing article after article is challenging especially if you are also taking multiple writing courses during the trimester already. I think that in future classes it will definitely be easier to put papers out more often because people will have a better understanding and will be more efficient. Being online this year did make taking the class harder. I think that conversing in class and feeling comfortable with the people in your class is important in a course like this. Once we go back to school and are able to have face-to-face conversations with people I think that it will definitely work better.
Don't Force It
By Henry Broberg
When planning this final issue of the Riverdale Review, we were prompted to make our pieces for this issue centered around wrapping up the school year and looking forward to next year. In my reflection of the past year spent away from the Riverdale community at large, I thought about the difficulty that I have noticed and experienced first hand when attempting to interact with those members of the student and teacher bodies that I have seen at CDL or elsewhere. Being out of practice with the act of socializing with these people for over a year certainly means that effort is required on both party’s parts in any sort of interaction. Whereas pre-pandemic much of this could have been instinctual, now there is an unnatural element of effort that was previously absent. In my experience, the interactions I have had with others over the past couple of months have felt forced, as if they were being held specifically for the purpose of having had these interactions, and not for the enjoyment of them, and I suppose in many cases this might have been true. Which begs the question, why do we feel the need to have these forced interactions? In my thinking of how to best answer this question, I thought of a recent experience I had in regards to this class. In the past issue of the Riverdale Review, I did not end up publishing any sort of piece or article for the paper. In our preparation for Issue #2, I decided to create a survey (via google form) to be shared with those who attend LIP (at that time a relatively recent addition to our school schedule) asking various questions in regards to student’s experience and opinion about the new format. Answers were to be anonymous, and my publication for the next issue would be a piece sharing my findings in this little survey. The idea in writing this was to get a good idea of the impact LIP has had on its participants, and whether or not it was actually effective. Questions varied from “how often do you attend LIP?” to “how much, if at all, has it impacted your mental health?” and “do you learn anything at LIP?” As one can see, it was crucial, in order for me to write an accurate paper addressing the results, that a wide sample size was received. If limited to no responses were received, the data would be useless as it would be judging a population by a sample. In total, I received 11 responses. We tried to get the survey out there through numerous different platforms, but, as evident, none succeeded. So this begged the question, why aren’t we getting more responses? I think this bears a similar answer to my initial query of “why do we feel the need to forcibly interact?” We feel the need to forcibly interact as it is our idea of “normal.” We, as humans, feel the need to go back to what we are accustomed to, in this case, life before the pandemic. It is against our primal instincts to try new things when we know old ones that work just as well or better, as “why fix what isn’t broken?” However, when the opportunity arose for the survey, people were not under the eye of others, and could therefore do whatever they were most comfortable with, which, due to the lack of sedentary action over the past year, is not participating and remaining in our own bubbles. I encourage all those reading this to challenge themselves to push beyond their comfort zone over the next year to interact with and engage with others, but not unnaturally. Forced connection benefits no one and bears no positive result. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t force ourselves to engage. A forceful engagement leaves the door open to natural interaction, yet does not have to. I hope that we all are able to keep this in mind over the next year.
Covid Sports
By Teddy Altman
When covid hit I wasn’t immediately thinking about my sports career being impacted obviously I was worried for everyone's health instead but as time went on I got more and more sad that sports weren't able to be played. That hit me really hard because that takes up about 75% of my day when I'm not in school. In that time I mostly rewatched a lot of sports highlights to keep busy and trained by myself alot to stay in shape. Then slowly sports began to come back and be integrated and that was so exciting to be able to play sports again even though they were a little different then we were used to. The first time our soccer team was able to get back out on the field and smell the freshly cut grass being gently warmed by the high sun in the sky was the time I felt at home once again. Training with friends and competing safely with other schools made going through a worldwide pandemic an easier task. I think with caution and patience sports will be back to normal at the end of summer and fall sports can be in full effect as school starts up again.
School Year Reflection
By Walter DeWitt
This school year has been frantic, to say the least. We came off a term of pass or fail grading straight into something nobody was expecting. Riverdale tried to lessen the load of work for each student by making it less total class time each week, which was helpful for us to adjust to the new way school was. As the year went on they kept making changes trying to make it better for the students and teachers alike, but it was a near-impossible task. We couldn’t go back in person for school and there was nothing that could be done about it. We still had to sit in front of our computers for hours a day doing school work and having to focus. This was much easier in person as we could be much more interactive and the teacher could see what we were doing the whole time. Online it was different because there was no way for the teacher to be able to know what we were doing. It was very boring at times because of how hard it was to be interactive online. So as a way to escape the boredom we could use our phones or play on our computers easily without much consequence. In a way, we had more freedom and in a way, we had less. That was until term 3 came and the rules became a little less strict. We were allowed to go back in person a little bit, but only for a couple hours a day and we couldn’t really learn anything in person because not everybody was there. It would be unfair then, to teach new things to only some of the people in a class and not to everyone else. The class aspect wasn’t the only change that happened. We also had to change how sports worked. The seasons were much shorter than normal making it so we had fewer games and events to play in. The practices and games all required masks which made playing sports a lot harder. We also had different timing for each sport, making them all in the springtime and all of them feel very weird to play. Overall this year really sucked, but now it's almost over and hopefully can go back to normal next year.