Sept. 10 marks one month since juniors started school at MSMS, and many are trying to or have adjusted to the education at their new school. Several juniors feel as if remote learning has made things harder on top of the rigorous classes, but many appreciate the effort administration has put into aiding their transition to MSMS.

“I think MSMS has made online school better than my school did physically,” Raeed Kabir said. “Everything has been great, but that does not mean that the workload hasn’t been overwhelming at times. Some days are stressful, and others are not so much.”

While many acknowledge the thought and effort put into the current system, many juniors are still facing difficulty with the transition to this new MSMS format.  Nala Nathan, another junior, found this month difficult because of things like the workload and pace.

“At the beginning, it was very rough,” Nathan said. “I didn’t go into this with the right mindset because of how many times MSMS changed things throughout the summer. Everything is so hard to keep up with and it is hard to grasp in such a short amount of time.”

The biggest change this year, for juniors and seniors alike, was the block schedule. While some juniors were used to this schedule from their old schools, others find it less than an ideal and some enjoy it. 

“I love the schedule,” junior Stephanie Ressel said. “I love the idea of taking Monday and Tuesday as a learning day, Wednesday as kind of a catch-up day, and Thursday and Friday as two more learning days.”

“It really is just the pace of everything,” Nathan said. “One of my classes, for example, is University General Biology. Everything in the class feels like it is speeding past and it is so hard to grasp everything when it’s going so fast. Gen. Bio is hard as it is, not considering the pace now due to the block schedule.”

Carter Miller felt disappointed about how the block schedule made him feel, and how much it has changed his MSMS experience.

“My old school had a block schedule,” Miller said. “When I showed up here and they threw a block schedule onto me, I was pretty disappointed initially. I was looking at getting away from the high school experience and going into a whole new world with the college schedule. It is one of the crucial things that makes us different from other high schoolers”

The transition to online learning has also made teachers quickly adapt. MSMS science classes, known for their hands-on learning experience, now conduct remote labs. For some students, this has not affected their enjoyment. 

“Dr. Gibson has done really well that we have all the materials that we need,” Kabir said. “We are making do with the same things we honestly would do at MSMS. The hardest parts of the labs are the lab reports, so everything has been fun.”

Miller, a visual learner, however, has found these remote labs hard to comprehend.

“Honestly, they all have been pretty interesting,” Miller said. “However, these labs can be very difficult to understand due to not being in a lab with the teacher present. The instruction manuals have not exactly been the best, so it has been a little bit of an adjustment. I think that if we were there with the teachers, the teachers would make the labs more adjustable, and they would be easier to work on with the right equipment.”

Nevertheless, many juniors have had nothing but praise for all of the teachers at MSMS and how hard they are working on giving the students the education they came for.

“The level of expertise from the teachers is just amazing,” Kabir said. “When I am in the classroom, I am always presented with this level of care and academic quality that you won’t see at many other schools.”

As juniors wrap up their first month, many are starting to realize the academic challenges that come with attending the sixth best school in the nation. However, they all understand the challenges that they have been put under and what they have to do to ensure the safety of each other.

“Obviously we are all struggling and my fellow juniors are struggling, but it is what it is and we have to keep pushing through until we make it through,” Nathan said.