On April 13, all students received an email stating the new principles that the school will use for grading for cycle six. As the global pandemic of COVID-19 has shut down our school, these new policies are being implemented to offset the disadvantages of online learning.

The email includes information about what assignments will be taken for a grade, what will happen with end of year exams and most importantly, how cycle six will be graded.

Cycle six grades will only go towards your second semester average if they bring it up. Otherwise, your cycle four and five grades will be averaged out.

With finals being cancelled as well, students are able to see what their second semester grades can be if they average their cycle four and five grades, which both me and my brother did.

We both discovered that our semester averages will be ‘A’s, which has caused us both, me especially, to lose some motivation to do the cycle six school work. Already with online school I have seen an increase in my procrastination regarding assignments and with the new information, it’s getting worse.

Students still have to do their work otherwise they will receive calls from the school about their participation so I know that I have to complete all of my assignments. It is just now a lot harder to find the drive to complete them to the best of my ability instead of doing the bare minimum.

I think it is important for students to remember that even though it may be hard and seem unnecessary, we all need to continue to do our work and finish out the cycle because if we start to slack off then we will not have information we need for classes next year.

If we all start to adopt the mentality that whether we try on our work or not it won’t matter, then we will just be setting ourselves up for failure later on. If we do the bare minimum or not turn in assignments then we won’t be learning anything for the cycle and therefore we won’t be well prepared for next school year.

I know that it is hard to motivate yourself to do work with the new information we have all been given and I know that it seems really easy to give up and not try our hardest on our work anymore but we need to try. We are all stuck at home all day every day and school work is a productive way to spend time and keep some semblance of normalcy while in this abnormal situation.