The transfer to LHS for new students has been unique this school year due to all learning being remote so far. During a normal school year, freshmen and other new students would take a tour of the school and meet other students and their teachers, among many other transitional activities. But this year, new students have only been to the building for orientation and potentially for any of the in-person classes that have met, or extracurricular activities that they may be involved in. 

School makes up a big part of a student’s social life. When students learn in person, they have a chance to interact with people that they might not otherwise. Due to the online nature and structure of eSchool, new students are unable to make the social connections they would form in an in-person learning environment.

“Even if you weren’t friends with someone, you would still be able to talk with them and get to know them [during in-person schooling]. So now, the amount of people I talk to is less,” said freshman Vanessa Zhang, who attended Oak Grove School last year.

New students who aren’t freshmen have also found it to be increasingly difficult to make new friends through eSchool. To adapt to the new circumstances, many of these students are trying to find new ways to develop friendships, such as by joining extracurricular activities. 

Junior Salma Taha formerly attended Vernon Hills High School. She has joined multiple clubs this year and said in reference to clubs that, “I like clubs better in person because we can interact with people much easier. We don’t get to choose which classes we have and with whom, but we can with clubs, and I feel like meeting face-to-face would allow people in the club to connect better.” 

Besides connecting with peers, students also connect with their teachers. When a student learns in person, rather than via Zoom, they have more time to talk and bond with their teachers. New students and freshmen have had a more difficult time with this than students who have been to the school before because they have never met the teachers or any of the staff in person.

“Office hours have been really helpful and then if I decide to show up early to class sometimes, I get to talk with the teacher one-on-one. And yeah, it’s of course not as much as in person, but still, through some ways I’ve been able to connect [with teachers],” Zhang said. 

While students who are new to LHS this year also had the experience of dealing with their past school during a global pandemic, every school has different precautions and instructional methods, so new students have had to adapt to LHS’s online learning environment, which might be very different from their old school’s. Even if a student is not new, their learning experience has been rapidly changing throughout this year, but new students are facing different sets of challenges.

If new students participate in hybrid learning later this year, they will finally begin their in-person experience at LHS. While a student bases their decision to go into hybrid learning on a variety of factors that are unique to their own life and family situation, a new student might base their decision on different things, including their newness to the school. Some new students might want to stay at home because of this, while other new students want to go into school because they want to have a chance to learn partially in person. Taha and Zhang, both of whom chose to go hybrid, were asked if they took into consideration their newness when making their decision. 

“Yes, because if I was at Vernon Hills right now, I would not have gone back because I probably would know the teachers,” Taha said. “I’ll go [to LHS] and actually get to know the school before we have to all go back.” 

Zhang added, “I feel like time management-wise, it’ll be very different, and I kind of wanted to dive head first into that and go into a new school and just be in this totally new environment.”