Calvin Lee
School being cancelled has drastically changed the lives of everyone. People in our school are affected in a vast number of ways. Although essential workers and healthcare personnel are pushed to their limits, others may also be struggling in their own ways.
Students at East High were put into distance learning almost without warning. Many students found that at first they had more time than they knew what to do with. The ones without essential jobs at grocery stores ended up finding hobbies to pass the time productively outside of online school work. Seniors lost the opportunity to have their final high school plans come about, which upsetted many, but the situation is understandable considering the gravity of the pandemic.
After interviewing Josh Weissert, a senior at East High and employee at the local Wegmans on Transit Road, the opinions of both a 12th grade student and an essential worker were revealed. Josh says that outside of the large amount of time spent at work, he has been able to apply to many scholarships as well as picked up longboarding as a new hobby. He said, “Longboarding is a great way to be outside, since we’re cooped up all day otherwise. It’s definitely one of my favorite activities now, because I can do it for hours everyday without getting bored, so I’d rate it a 9/10. It’s also very easy to stay far apart from friends, wearing masks of course, if we do decide to hit a parking lot together.
“Applying to scholarships has been huge for me during quarantine, because it was hard to find time to do so during a regular school week. College is just around the corner, and getting scholarships will help tremendously for the future.” – Mr. Mellerski
To get a teacher’s perspective on dealing with remote learning and the huge shift in their jobs, Mr. Mellerski, a business teacher for both introductory and college-level accounting courses at East HIgh, was interviewed about the new hobbies he began. He states that he started to experiment in the kitchen, which he rates a 9/10 because cooking was always something he wanted to do. On the other hand, he has had to learn a lot of new technology for teaching, such as Zoom and video lessons, which “isn’t very fun, 6/10. Despite this, learning computers is 100% related to teaching. I have to learn the software Zoom and a lot of other aspects of grading that are new to all of us.”
Mr Swatland, the principal of East High, was interviewed on his take of finding new hobbies during this time. He says, “I have not picked up any new hobbies but have had time to spend more time reading, which I enjoy. I just finished The Outsiders.” He rates reading an 8/10 activity, because “it gives me an opportunity to take my mind off of my job which has become increasingly more difficult.”
Mr. Swatland also enjoys reading for at least an hour a day, and appreciates the learning aspect of the activity.
I interviewed my mom, Ms. Lin, on her new hobbies around the house. She has been growing fruits and vegetables in the backyard as well as indoors through hydroponics. Due to her occupation and scientific background, she is able to combine solvents to grow plants in containers indoors. It can be a time-consuming hobby, with many different species of vegetables that she is experimenting with.
She says, “I would rate my new hobby as a 10/10, because it is not only fun, but gives me results that we can eat! It’s quite entertaining to experiment with which species of plants are able to be successfully grown with the materials I’m using.”
When asked about what hobbies of family members she finds most annoying, she said that she didn’t like her sons playing too many video games, because she wanted them to be more productive!
