By Lexi McFadden

There’s just something different about Lake Pend Oreille High School. The culture, the staff and the way it makes you feel about yourself. I went to Sandpoint Middle School in eighth grade but dropped out and tried to do online. I just didn’t have enough self-motivation to sit down and make the time to actually do it. Some people do, I just didn’t have that at the time but I was only thirteen.  I was lost academically before I came to LPO. When I was a freshman I didn’t try my hardest and I had really poor attendance.

Freshman year taught me a lot, I was going through some family stuff and I just gave up, then my mindset changed. I realized I wanted more for my life. I wanted a life without so many struggles in my future. I knew I could get good grades and be at school almost everyday. I could do well, graduate high school and go to college.  My life’s not perfect right now, but in the last two years I’ve managed to come to school almost everyday and I’m pretty proud of my grades.  School is a good distraction and this school helps me decide exactly what I want to do in my future. This school has brought out the courage and confidence in me that I didn’t know I had. I’m going to do something great with my life.

In the Spring of 2020, the Coronavirus hit, we had to stop doing school face to face and do everything online. If I still had had the mindset I did in eighth grade I would have failed fourth quarter. I had matured since middle school, and I actually made the time to do the schoolwork and had a lot of motivation to get it done. Some people think school isn’t that big of a deal, to me, it is. So I worked hard to get all Bs. The majority of the school just gave up. It is really hard to do school from home when a teacher isn’t there to help you. Most people need to be in a classroom with hands-on learning. I know that if I had new classes with stuff I’ve never learned before it would have been pretty much impossible for me to understand the new material.

 This just illustrates how important it is for all students that school stays open. If we go into the red phase of school closure. I’m scared the classes I will be taking later in the year will be too difficult online. I will have some new classes and I won’t know what to do without having my teachers there. I don’t think I would be successful. Even though I passed all my classes in the fourth quarter it was really hard. I’m also concerned for my peers because I know they feel the same way. 

 So how do we keep from having a repeat of the fourth quarter? We wear our masks, go through all the sanitation procedures and try to social distance. Not just to keep schools open but to prevent the spread of covid. I know masks suck but to keep our community safe and keep our school open we need to wear them. It’s only October there’s still a lot of 2020 left so be careful out there.