Three weeks ago students at Albany High were abruptly informed that our school would be closed maybe within the next week due to the covid 19 (corona) virus, the next school day school was closed. Since, our emails have been blowing up with tons of work from between five and seven different classes, depending on the student, and all on different platforms. Trying to keep up with what work is for what classes and where to even find the classes is extremely hard and stressful, in addition not every student is sitting at home doing nothing right now. Many people have to take care of younger siblings or elderly family members that may or may not be infected with the virus and still have to worry about keeping themselves healthy. Not every family has a computer or all the resources needed to do this online work. I value our free education but rushed “distance learning” isn’t the equivalent of being in a classroom, interacting with teachers and learning from the questions of other students. Kids are worried about getting they're work done as fast as they can to get to their other responsibilities instead of doing it efficiently and learning from it. “Pretending this is a normal situation is not facing reality; this is not a normal situation. The changes in the world because of the pandemic are going to be felt for a long, long time to come” says Cassandra Extavour, professor at Harvard University. Students should be given more sympathy when it comes this pandemic and teachers too. Teachers are having almost as hard of a time as students if not more having to juggle class work for all their different classes while keeping track of their own kids and their school work. Does this seem fair to our students and teachers? Due to the added responsibility in students lives, scrambled set up of online schooling, and the overall stress and hardship of this worldwide pandemic, it is unfair to expect students and teachers to perform to their best abilities under these circumstances. Which is why it’s necessary that AUSD students get an automatic pass for the rest of this school year.