Students of Cathedral Prep are reintroducing themselves to in-person learning as the second semester kicked off last week. A large majority of the Rambler student body had been attending class virtually since the start of the 2020-2021 school year in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Members of the senior class especially are transitioning from this way of learning to once again being present in the building for in-class instruction.

Andrew Brown, a member of the senior class, had been learning virtually for a total of three weeks up until last week. As his fellow classmates grew to be increasingly scarce in the high school’s hallways and teachers began to tailor their instruction to online learning, he felt that attending school virtually would provide the same educational quality while allowing him to complete other important tasks.

“It helped me to be more efficient with college applications and homework,” said Andrew. “I could get it all done in classes.”

While the educational portion of school remained the same when attending from his household desk, Andrew explained that he experienced unexpected downfalls from learning at home.

“Instruction from home just felt a lot more repetitive and got really lonely,” Andrew said. “Being in the same room all day and not seeing anyone started to get kind of boring.”

Joey Amann, a senior at Cathedral Prep, chose to attend school from his iPad for a reason similar to Andrew’s; he found that many of his close friends were not attending in-person, so school days were somewhat boring.

“I was more or less following the hybrid schedule, but I would be virtual some weeks or days,” Joey said. “I maybe wouldn’t come in on a Friday because I knew not too many people would be there.”

Joey explained that his experience with online learning was overall pretty positive and enjoyable, although he expressed that there were occasional struggles with focusing in class and the work he had to complete.

“I would be able to focus, but just being at home and trying to focus on a class I wasn’t as interested in was pretty hard to do with all the distractions at home,” Joey said. “I still liked [online learning] more simply due to the lack of people in school.”

He decided to go back to in-person learning at the beginning of last week after assuming his friends would return to school.

“I found out that Gannon was starting back up, so I knew more of my friends would be back in school,” Joey said. “It made me happy to be able to see them again.”

When asked how he would feel about the entire senior class returning for in-person classes throughout the second semester, the Prep senior expressed that it would be great for the brotherhood.

“I think if we can all get one last ride of two or three weeks together as a senior class it would help us all appreciate each other,” Joey said. “It could hopefully become something we hold onto for our entire lives and make life right now seem a little bit more normal.”