High school students detail emotional toll of remote learning
Trey Goughnour and Nicolas Guynn discuss the struggles and seclusion of online learning on 'The Story'
Two high school athletes joined "The Story" Friday to discuss the loss of their seasons due to school closures during the coronavirus pandemic, with one telling host Martha MacCallum that officials "have taken all hope away from us."
Football player Trey Goughnour, a senior from Clarke County, Nevada, described being in a "state of numbness", saying the lives students live has been "redundant."
Goughnour also described the poor habits he has formed in his final year of school, saying that midnight deadlines for assignments have caused he and his fellow students to procrastinate.
"For me, a senior, I'm going to college next year. That is going to be my life for four years," he said. "This year, I'm supposed to be creating the best habits for myself possible. But I've just been creating the worst habits for myself possible. I know I'm not the only one either."
TEEN ANXIETY, DEPRESSION SOAR DUE TO COVID PANDEMIC
Fresno, California senior Nicolas Guynn told MacCallum that the lost year has caused him to live a "new normal of sadness."
"When I first started coming home, everything was kind of fresh," Guynn said, "We were all told ‘Hey, you're going to have an extra week off of school. We’re going to move up the spring break, you’re going to have a full week off and then we are going to get back into it, back to normal and everything is going to go just as we planned.' But as the dates kept getting pushed back when we would go back and eventually summer came, my mom just started asking me, ‘Hey, you seem really down. Are you OK?’ She just was constantly checking in on me.
"But I felt normal. That's when it hit me that my new normal was what used to be when I was sad and when I was really down. That was normal for me now."
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Goughnour expressed similar feelings, saying that the delayed football season has left him sad.
"They have taken all hope away from us, especially from my county," he said. "They said ‘Oh, we're going to get to play in August. Oh, we're going to get to play in March.’ They just kept taking the hope away from us. I’ve been staying ready, I've been working out this entire year.
"It's like rehearsing for a concert that’s just never going to happen. It’s made me feel really numb and really sad."