It starts with a tell-tale sore throat, and before I know it, I’m sick with a runny nose, congestion and general tiredness that won’t end for a week or more. It sucks, straight up.
But there’s a pattern I notice every time I’m sick: everyone else at school is also sick. I’ll be walking around, going from class to class, masked, and then I’ll sit next to someone with a box of tissues. I’ll be walking down the hallways and hear a wet sneeze. Now, this could be written down as a coincidence, but not when it’s tied to a viral infection.
It’s no secret that schools are basically sickness playgrounds, but it doesn’t have to be this way. There’s no way to prevent getting sick 100% of the time, but there’s a difference between trying to control nature and being a courteous person. Did we forget everything that we learned from COVID-19? When you’re sick, please stay home or wear a mask.
But then there’s the social considerations: If I wear a mask, everyone’s going to know I’m sick, or think I have COVID, and that’s bad. Wearing masks, a preventative measure to help stop sickness from spreading, has become associated with a very difficult period in all our lives. It’s easy to think that your only option is to pretend you’re not sick and go about your day, but that’s not helping you or the people around you.
By ignoring your own health, you aren’t taking care of yourself to heal faster, and not taking any preventative measures for other people is only putting them at risk.
Trying to sift through all my feelings about illness in school is about as simple as writing a paper while sick–that is to say, not very simple. Because missing a day of school can practically set you back a week. One day and you spend all of your free community time for the next week meeting with teachers and retaking tests.
Students are coming to school sick precisely because they feel they can’t afford to miss a day, regardless of their health. They are still expected to do work even when they are at home and sick, mind you, sick enough to have to miss school, so it’s not worth it to miss school and be even more behind.
We need to be attacking the impact of being sick from both sides. Students, I ask you to, if you are sick, please be courteous of your peers; getting a cold from a friend isn’t going to make it any better than from someone random in my physics class.
And teachers, keep being understanding about students’ ability to handle work when sick. Together, we can make being sick less of a community impact and less of a burden on us as students individually.
