Sophia Hauer

Transitioning from middle school to high school is enough of a challenge for a student to face. For freshman Sophia Hauer, COVID-19 took away her first year of high school, her first track season, as well as tournaments for her club soccer team. 

But despite all that the coronavirus has taken away from Hauer, she finds herself being able to enjoy the slowed down lifestyle in quarantine. “I’ve just been getting into some hobbies that I left behind when I didn’t really have time,” she said. “I’ve been running a lot more and spending a lot more time with my family.” She also started making earrings for her friends, and delivering them to her their houses as a small gesture for them. 

As for digital learning days, Hauer finds herself having mixed feelings about working from home. She notices that DLDs sometimes take longer than desired, “because there’s no teacher instruction, so you have to figure everything out [without them].”

The hardest part about quarantine for Hauer has been trying to learn math online. “You can’t always ask the question that you need to ask because sometimes you don’t know what you’re doing wrong,” she said. However, she said that her math teacher and the rest of her teachers have all been very understanding and helpful during this time. 

Compared to her time during the normal school year, Hauer feels that she has been much less stressed out during this time. In the fall, she said that “I was actually pretty stressed out because I was doing high school soccer, [and] it was right after school until five so I was rushing around all of the time.” She was feeling the same type of stress when track season was starting. 

Online school is not the same experience as classes in person, and Hauer finds that she most misses being able to see her friends during this time away from campus. Coming to La Salle as a student in this fall, she will be a sophomore. “A few people have definitely mentioned ‘sophomore-itus,’ and how there’s going to be a lot more work [next year],” she said. I’m definitely a little bit nervous for that, but I’m sure that it’ll [all work] out.”