I remember when my hands would shake before pressing “Send” on a message in my program’s group chat. That might’ve just been me, but knowing that tens or even hundreds of students would possibly be seeing my texts made me overthink every word. These days however, I don’t even think about it – I don’t have any other options.
Among many unfortunate turns this year has taken, remote learning is one I dreaded the most. Well, maybe not the most given the severity of everything else going on in the world, but definitely close to the top of my list. I was surprised to find that online learning has almost filled certain gaps that in-person learning never did – communication between students being one of them.
Ryerson is primarily a commuter school, meaning most students, including myself, don’t have the luxury of meeting new friends in residence and interacting with people outside of their own bubble very often. I’ve always thought of myself as pretty outgoing, but as experience has shown me, it takes me a while to feel confident again in a new environment. With that being said, remote learning has sped up that process and forced me to communicate with people outside of my friend group.
The first week of school, in all of my classes someone took the initiative to make a Facebook or WhatsApp group chat and add everyone to it. Right off the bat, this gave me the names, and in some cases the phone numbers, of hundreds of students I would’ve otherwise never even said “Hi” to. Not only are the group chats a good place to learn each other’s names, but they’re also a community where we can rely on one another for clarity and guidance, when raising our hand in class to ask the professor a question is no longer an option.
Take my french class for example – our professor sent us into breakout rooms over Zoom on the very first day, in an attempt to break the ice between students. I virtually met four strangers and we’ve been texting ever since. I even asked one of them how they felt about our unconventional acquaintance, and she too agreed we would’ve been far less likely to talk in person, and that hiding behind a screen has made most people more comfortable reaching out and making friends.
Despite my longing for the good old days of in-person university experiences, there might actually be one good thing to come out of remote learning. Although it worries me that we’ve possibly become a little too comfortable connecting with each other through screens and lines of code, it’s been nice to feel part of a community again, even if the reasons behind it are our mutual need for a sense of normalcy and belonging in a setting that’s new to us all.