Over the past two years, students’ perception of school has been vastly altered by COVID-19. Aside from the obvious use of masks, early start times and strict deadlines have regained their place in the new sense of normalcy.

Back before the introduction of the pandemic, students were forced to repeatedly wake up early every day after receiving an inadequate amount of sleep. The primary cause of their sleep deficiency was mostly upcoming homework, projects and studying for tests, all of which needed to be completed in a short period of time. If that wasn’t the case, the other problem was that students say they are rarely able to fall asleep at a normal time.

During online school, the earliest classes began around 10 a.m., so students were able to get more than an additional hour of sleep. Furthermore, the deadlines were flexible, which helped students to complete their work while not having to compromise their sleep to finish assignments. 

Sophomore Jayden Fortier stated, “Going back to strict deadlines has caused me way more unnecessary stress compared to distance learning last year. I have to choose between giving up sleep or other things to keep up with school.”

Many students have also conveyed how their workload is inconsistent depending on their schedule.

“It’s not uncommon for students to have consecutive days when they are overwhelmed with too much work that has to be finished in an unreasonable amount of time. By having the lenient due dates last year, I was able to balance out the schoolwork over a couple more days and didn’t have to give up my wellbeing or miss out on other things such as sports,” added sophomore Max McCarty added.

Knowing that assignments could be turned in late without penalties allowed students to produce quality work without stressing or panicking about meeting deadlines. Instead of quickly completing assignments and moving onto the next one, students were able to take an extra couple of days to put more thought into their responses and make sure they thoroughly grasped the new concepts.

Marketing teacher Jenna Baird conveyed that, “Deadlines should be flexible based on what students have going on, but students shouldn’t be using it to take advantage of teachers.”

The overall consensus from students and staff seems to be that due dates should be flexible by a couple days; however, students shouldn’t be waiting until the last day of the quarter to start work from months ago.