From the Gossip Girl Report: Education is Liberation

From the Gossip Girl Report: Education is Liberation

Gossip Girl XOXO, Staff Writer

Gossip Girl here, your one and only source into the scandalous lives of CdM’s very own elite. As the red wave (not of Republican votes; of coronavirus cases) descends upon the country, and as sunny Newport Beach shifts into the purple zone (in this case, purple stands for widespread, not royalty), I’ve loosened my fingers and uncapped my pen to bring to you the very latest 411 of all the happenings around CdM.

Sightings

Enthusiastic parents welcoming staff and students with clearly very homemade welcome signs back to campus, said parents then driving off campus without ever having to step foot beyond the prison gate lookalikes that surround the school. Dear, darling confused teachers turning from Zoomer to roomer to Zoomer, Zoomers staring glumly into the void, and roomers awkwardly trying not to touch each other or inhale each other’s germs. Sharpen your wits and sharpen your pencils, school has begun!

Let me walk you through a day of in-person hybrid school

We start off our day of in-person school (yay, how fun!) by parking by the baseball field because there is simply no parking. Why is there no parking? Because the main pool parking lot is undergoing some mysterious construction, the nature of which, aside from posters promising a beautified campus exterior, remains undisclosed. Nevertheless, we bravely make the trek from baseball field to the middle school gates, where smiling staff wielding thermometers approach dangerously close. We brace ourselves for the temperature screening, but no! – instead, the smiling staff wave us right in and tell us to have a great day. Slightly confused, we pass through the gates unscreened and unsure of what just happened. Some of the slightly more concerned glance uncertainly at other foreheads, wondering if anyone harbors a fever, cough, or other Covid symptoms.

We make it to first period, where we breathe in the oh-so-clean air that is being filtered by nonexistent air filters. (It is worth mentioning that some teachers have taken it upon themselves to provide real-life air filters for their rooms.) During class, as Zoomers and roomers alike strain to hear each other over the crackling Internet connection, and our teacher swivels from computer to room and back again, we discreetly try to lean away from that kid diagonally across from us who keeps coughing and touching his face. Derivatives, Jacksonian democracy, chemical equations, and the wittiness of Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice are lost on us as we desperately try to convince ourselves that the kid is coughing because he has allergies, not because he and his sickness were able to pass through the prison gates undetected by the smiling staff.

At break times, we attempt to make ourselves as small as possible as we watch people blatantly ignore un-enforceable one-directional hallway markings and brush elbows with each other. We take out our phones and text our beloved friend, who is Zooming class today. They tell us that their eyes are about to pop out of their eye sockets. Emboldened by that lovely image, we make our way to our next class. As unpleasant as this may sound, we must shoulder on. Resiliency, CdM! Even if we end up on the floor in the hallway of a filled-to-capacity ICU, next to one of our poor teachers no less, at least those few weeks of in-person school were totally worth it!

And who am I? Now that’s a secret I’ll never tell.

You know you love me.

XOXO,

Gossip Girl