What It’s Like To Go Back To School In 2021

Bridget Donovan on the stage at the Framingham High School auditorium, March 8, 2021. (Joanie Tobin/GBH News)

Bridget Donovan has spent most of her senior year alone in her room, staring at a computer screen. Every school day for the past year, she logged into Zoom classes and struggled to pay attention. She missed her friends, her teachers, and the tech booth in the Framingham High School auditorium, where Bridget used to run the stage lights before the coronavirus pandemic upended her life.

“Since my school shut down last March, this year has been a crazy ride,” Bridget said in one of a series of video diaries sent to GBH News as part of our COVID and the Classroom series. “I feel like I haven’t been to school since, like, 300 years ago. I can’t even remember the last time I walked down the halls of Framingham High School.”

Finally, with roughly two months left in the school year, Bridget joined some 1350 other students — roughly half of the student body — in returning to school. The students alternate weeks in school, so the hallways weren’t especially crowded. Still, after so much time home, being back in the building was an adjustment.

“I will say it was kinda really hard to focus,” Bridget said. “It was definitely a different atmosphere.”

Read the rest of the story at GBH’s website.