This is actually a really good question for teachers.

And the short answer is “badly”. Especially bad for kids that were in elementary school during the pandemic.

[USA]

I was in highschool in 2020, just a mere week before school got cancelled, this dipshit started a fight against me and I excercised self-defence, and school admin sided against me, so I got arrested and held in the police station for a few hours. (Edit: I was 17 btw, still a minor, wtf)

Now, for context, I’m ethnic Chinese, anti-Asian hate is already starting to become a thing, and that was likely one of the reasons why I got targeted.

And like literally a week later, school was cancelled.

God damn why didn’t they cancel it a week earlier, that fight could’ve been avoided.

They posted asynchonous assignments on Google Classroom, but school was already in the process of trying to get me expelled for my act of self-defence, so I didn’t bother. I literally learn more just reading an encyclopedia and whatever bullshit propaganda they teach.

Charges got dismissed, and they ended up not expelling me, but still, I didn’t really bother with doing the Google Classroom stuff, I was already depressed after the injustice that I faced. Its now via Google Meet, I hated to be on camera anyways, weird af, so I didn’t do it. Which means I failed the 2020-2021 year, which I had to do again. My mom made me go to finish it. I wanted to just do GED and get it done with, but my mother said no, so I did, but eventually I got so depressed I stopped going. So I just did GED instead, passed all of the subjects without studying, scores are much higher than average. So I’m not stupid, I just hate school, tyrannical administrators and teachers with their tyrannical rules, literally detention for missing a tie, or wearing a hoodie when its cold-af and the heating is partially broken.

Got accepted to college, then ended up withdrawing. Because, guesswhat, my mother totaly ignored my depression and thought I can just use my willpower and persevere through university, what the fuck. I lose control of my emotions, just reading some news articles made me cry about the injustices of the world, about the time my older brother abused me, all the times I’ve faced bullying and discrimination, my birth country government’s rejection of me, and the tyrannical school administrators and the gestapo police illegal arrests.

I kinds overdosed on antidepressants. I wanted to be happy (it didn’t work of course, that’s not how medications work, but I was desparate, okay). I did that a few times actually. Like I always take more than prescribed and end up running out of it before its supposed to get refilled.

Anyways, now my parents don’t trust me with medications. Now I’m not on any medications and the depression-headache is killing me.

I kinda feel tired every day and wanna kms.

This fucking world… Fuck CCP. My older brother can go to hell. Fucking bullies and racists and xenophobes can get hit by a truck, fuck the far-right, fuck the education system, dipshit school administrators deserved to be tortured, given how much they love to torture students. Fucking brain chemicals ffs making me have a headache. And fuck filial piety, always giving adults excuse to abuse children. And the fucking conservatism, never really taking depression seriously.

How are things going with me? Bruh ICE is raiding Chinatowns, its cooked, bro. Scared to go outside.

(Sorry for the rant)

i saw reivews of my universities people were not happy, and this seems to happen to all the state unis in our region. all said they dint learn shit, and career is practically frozen or dead in its track. so much so, that the universities has ENROLLMENT shortfalls. the lucky ones transferred away to a proper UC system with more career track development(aka volunteering experience), or had enough luck to have a job after graduation.

also this was a problem prior to pandemic, but covid exacerbated the problems.

Some of the exams were easier because of it, and online school gave me access to a laptop which got me into programming and an unfiltered internet.

The first lockdown here in Denmark hit in March 2020. At the time, I was in my last year of high school and had to study from home, and due to being at higher risk of getting seriously ill, I had to stay home and attend via video call while my class mates returned to school a month or so later. That was tough.

Fast forward half a year later, I had started university where my first semester was partly on-site and partly remote. That was fine since I’d already gotten used to studying from home. The next semester though (Q1 and Q2 of 2021) was 100% online, and I had never felt so demotivated in my life. I could miss lectures at 2 PM because I couldn’t get out of bed. It was that bad.

But, I managed to push through and completed my Bachelor’s degree in software development in the summer of 2023. Fast forward 2 years, today, I have been in a large private IT company working with IT operations (system administration, Linux servers, etc.) and now I’m back at (another) university working with Linux servers and pretty happy with it.

Overall I think I managed to do pretty well during the whole thing, but the pandemic definitely took its toll on my mental health. It did teach me one thing though, to really appreciate being able to be outside, being able to move freely, and being able to spend time with other people.

Graduated high school in 2021; I was about 16/17. For me, my senior year of HS wasn’t that bad. Sure, we all couldn’t physically be with one another, but I didn’t really mind. I’m a person who likes to hang out by myself than with other people most of the time. But if my friend wanted to hang out, we go on video calls. I actually prefer online classes. I didn’t need to wake up so freaking early to try to stay awake for 6 hours everyday and come back home to study for 4 more hours. I got to walk on stage when I graduated (all wearing masks tho). I’m just glad I got through high school because I didn’t really enjoy it (people there were okay/nice. It was the curriculum that made me dislike HS–in America).

Currently, I’m in my 5th year of Uni studying studio arts, but is thinking about going to trade school at my community college for welding because it’s harder for people who just graduated to get into (entry level) creative positions, the studio job isn’t what I want anymore, and visual development for animation is oversaturated/extremely competitive. I survived the pandemic, but I’m struggling to survive this current semester because of feeling jaded in studying the arts, still depressed, and lost my passion for creating stuff, but is slowly regaining it back. Overall, trying to figure out young adult life (now 22) and trying to keep my worrying about my future/career to a minimum.

Much better than before, remote school was an absolute shitshow for my mental health. I hope that whatever made it so bad won’t happen for remote work, because it’s common in my profession and I would like to try it out.

(I am on the younger, but not youngest, side of Gen Z)

The uk made exams “easier” (they made exams less about memorising facts and more about applying them) for students in secondary school during the lockdowns, that was quite nice. (And I dont know anyone who did any worse in exams because of lockdown)

I definitely feel like I’m not as good as socialising as I should be, but I don’t know if that’s just me because I don’t have a non-lockdown version of myself to compare to.

I think I would rather be the person I am because of the lockdown than the person I would have been without it. (although I didn’t lose anyone close to me, I definitly think the world would have been better without it)

This is Lemmy, no one here is under 40.