By Jeremiah McBurrows, Heritage High School, Frisco, Texas
In March 2020, millions of students worldwide were sent home due to COVID-19. The idea of “virtual school” quickly became a concern for many parents, as 55% of parents believe online learning caused their children to fall behind in school, according to USA Today.
While most students saw virtual learning as a temporary fix for a sudden change in circumstance, for Lucas Jackson there was, in his own words, “no switch.”
Lucas, 17, isn’t your average high school senior. Having been enrolled in virtual school since seventh grade, his journey has been riddled with anxiety, self rediscovery and growth.
Virtual school is nothing new to Lucas, having attended virtual school by choice for two semesters by the time COVID hit.
“Before COVID even happened, I was already at an online school,” Lucas says. “Then I joined regular school two months before COVID started.”
This change only fed into Lucas’s anxiety, leading to a commitment to virtual school for the rest of his high school career.
In views of how students prefer to learn, 65 percent would choose exclusively in-person instruction. This is compared to the 18 percent who favor a hybrid model and 9 percent who would rather learn online, according to Healthline. This leaves Lucas in the heavy minority as his social anxiety is induced by the classroom environment. This leads him to find comfort in the idea of a faceless, disconnected experience in online education.
“Physical school can be overwhelming…it’s very anxiety-inducing for me,” Lucas says. “Online school, (it’s) more just workable for me… It’s really just thinking what people could be thinking of me.”
“(Virtual school) definitely works.” Lucas says. “You know, I can work at my own pace…I can absolutely work ahead.”
Even though Lucas has spent the past four years in front of a computer, he experiences fleeting second thoughts on how he wishes to pursue his education.
“All this time alone now makes me crave the human connection again,” Lucas says. “So that’s one of the things like why I’m struggling to pick if I should go back or not.”
Along with his changes in environment, Lucas also finds comfort in his rediscovered passion: video production.
“Actually, I rediscovered my love (for) video making and video production,” Lucas says. “This definitely feels like my passion.”
That path was anything but simple.
“I definitely made crappy, almost fancams videos, as a kid for YouTubers I liked,” Lucas says. “So, after a while, I did want to get back into video editing… And then last year, I had found out that there was a creative media course at my school. I’ve really enjoyed making those. That’s how I rediscovered [OIDJ].”
To pursue his passion, Lucas attended a film camp to further his interests and find inspiration in the community.
“I was always interested in creative stuff…but I never fully committed to it,” Lucas says. “The Film Camp Film Festival that I did last month…that’s really helped me figure out what I want to do in life.”
Lucas’s life may not fit the bill of what the average person might assume, but he is well on his journey to find his own path and comfort within himself.
“For a while I’ve just felt lost…And I just felt almost weird, like a bad weird,” Lucas says. “But recently, I have started overcoming that, like figuring myself out, and it’s still far from finding my exact identity. But I’ve still started.”
