Flu wreaks havoc as students scramble to catch up
With the wintertime often comes more sicknesses with viruses such as colds, flu, and COVID-19 spreading faster and more frequently. Many students are trying to stay healthy by sanitizing, wearing masks, and getting COVID and flu vaccines.
There’s probably never a good time to get the flu, but for students, with grades for the 4th six weeks due Tuesday, it can be especially challenging.
“It was just physically and mentally draining,” junior Ria Bhasin said. “I was set back by two days so that meant I had to catch up on the work I already missed and then do the work that was due the next day so I was doing double the amount of work.”
The flu hits fast and hard and spreads so quickly, and becomes so overwhelming that it gets hard to handle,
— school nurse Emily Mikeska
Flu outbreaks are at one of the highest levels and the school hasn’t been spared with approximately 20 percent of students having missed multiple days to this highly contagious illness.
“It seems that when the flu hits fast and hard and spreads so quickly, and becomes so overwhelming that it gets hard to handle,” nurse Emily Mikeska said. “I think that the biggest problem that we have right now is that it’s just spreading so quickly and overwhelming everybody.”
Aware of all the stress caused from missing school, teachers have been working alongside students to catch them up on their work.
“It’s been pretty hectic because we usually have our make-up tests scheduled for particular times and usually we’ll get two or three at a time, but I had a full classroom with almost twenty people,” biology teacher Richard Sabatier said. “I know students have a lot on their plate, especially AP kids, so I try to be as flexible as possible and set a soft deadline.”
In order to prevent further spreading of the sickness, Mikeska encourages students to take appropriate precautions when dealing with the flu.
It was just physically and mentally draining. I was doing double the amount of work,
— junior Ria Bhasin
“The number one thing that everybody needs to practice is hand washing because our hands are our number one way of spreading germs and getting them to ourselves by what we touch because our hands are constantly touching our faces and stuff like that,” Mikeska said. “If you are sick, then stay home.”
In the meantime, when a student misses large amounts of school, some teachers use an “incomplete” as a placeholder on HAC until the student is able to complete it.
“If a student is absent a teacher could utilize the incomplete grade to give the student the opportunity to do their work from when they were gone,” AP Human Geography teacher Tim Johannes said. “The teacher’s main job is to assess what the student knows and if they’re not there or they have the inability to do their work, it’s very difficult for the teacher to assess that knowledge, so an incomplete until they can do it in a timely manner.”
Melody Tavallaee is a senior who joined Wingspan during her sophomore year. One of her greatest passions is iced coffee and you can almost always find...
