{"id":2438,"date":"2021-09-17T15:17:55","date_gmt":"2021-09-17T21:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:10043\/?p=2438"},"modified":"2025-03-07T07:15:16","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T13:15:16","slug":"3-real-world-skills-students-will-take-away-from-pandemic-schooling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/3-real-world-skills-students-will-take-away-from-pandemic-schooling\/","title":{"rendered":"3 real-world skills students will take away from pandemic schooling"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared in\u00a0The Tennessean<\/a>\u00a0September 11, 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fall semester, winter break, spring semester, summer break \u2014 repeat.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a comforting and predictable pattern that takes most of us through our formative years. \u00a0There\u2019s an 8 a.m. bell, class, lunch, some more class, and then we are dismissed for the day.<\/p>\n

At the time, I felt a bit trapped by the daily and seasonal cadence of school.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t wait to get into the work world where I would finally have at least some choice about when I would work hard and when I would take a break.<\/p>\n

Then, after a year out of school, I realized I was struggling with time management. With no one telling me when to take a break, I would overwork on weekends and be tired during the week.\u00a0 In my eagerness to prove myself, I would take on too many assignments and struggle to meet deadlines. I had to admit it: Those forced boundaries of the school year, so stifling at the time, provided a good lesson in discipline and efficiency.<\/p>\n

The change from being a student to an employee and eventually an employer took some time to figure out. And despite all the great things I had learned at school, I found I needed a few other hard lessons from the \u201creal world\u201d that formal education had somehow overlooked before I found my footing at work.<\/p>\n

With school starting this past month for everyone from kindergarteners to grad students, the coronavirus has made it difficult to know what to expect.\u00a0The familiar patterns of the school day and even the school year feel shaky, or temporary, or have disappeared altogether.<\/p>\n

Many parents of younger students find themselves conducting at least some level of home schooling.\u00a0 Middle school and high school students are either attending classes in weird, socially distanced classrooms or just doing 100% of their learning virtually<\/a> over Zoom.\u00a0Even college students are having to quarantine in their dorms, missing out on the typical college experience that normally helps a kid turn into an adult.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly a tough time to be a student.<\/p>\n

But this strange time, amid a global pandemic, also presents some opportunities for lessons that a regular school year cannot convey.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to find silver linings in a crisis, but for the future doctors, lawyers, techies\u00a0and entrepreneurs who make their way through school during this crisis, there are some valuable lessons to be learned that will one day serve them well.<\/p>\n

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For good or ill, one could argue that the uncertainty of the school experience today more closely resembles the less predictable work world in general. These pandemic school experiences and adaptations are giving students early exposure to some of the soft skills that they will need when they eventually enter a career.<\/p>\n

Watching my own kids navigate this Pandemic 101 course that none of us expected, I can see them gaining experience in work skills like:<\/p>\n