I am sure by now you have read about a million articles on how tough the transition to online schooling is and a few million more on the tips on how to thrive in these unfavorable circumstances. While I completely agree that online schooling poses a great deal of challenges, I decided to do something every motivational guru asks you to do: take a glass-half-full approach in every situation. I began listing all the things that I am liking about online schooling, and to my surprise, the benefits of Zoom university are more impactful that I realized. Who would have thought staring into a screen all day as opposed to the quintessential American on-campus college experience would have any positives at all? But here it goes:
- Saving Time on Commute:
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While staring into your screen for a Zoom class is nothing similar to the in-person learning experience, it sure is a lot less time-consuming to just log in to your zoom lecture via your computer than actually having to get ready and drag yourself to class. It cuts the one hour you need to worry about getting ready and catching the bus on time or driving in circles around the parking lot until you finally find that one parking space during peak hours. During regular in-person classes, you will find yourself rushing from one building to the other to make it in time for your class, heaving and panting and struggling to find a decent place to sit. With online classes, this whole shebang, however integral to your college experience, is basically cut to zero saving you a great deal of time and energy throughout the day.
- Attending Morning Classes Regularly:
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I wonder if I would have been able to attend all my morning classes as consistently had it been a regular in-person semester. I have met very few college students that are self-professed morning people. Most others, myself included, stay up till late hours for completing college assignments only to catch a few hours of sleep in order to get up on time the next day. And the act of waking up for a morning class with the blaring sound of that alarm when it takes all you have to not hit snooze and curl back into the bed on a cold winter morning is a struggle in itself. Then you have to go attend a class where you are hit by the course material before the morning coffee has a chance to hit your system. Attending classes on Zoom gives you a sufficient time to wake up, and maybe still be in your PJs (though most productivity experts advise against this) while you sip on your coffee, have a hot breakfast and attend your lecture. This allows you to wake up and come to your senses gradually, allowing you to better concentrate on your lectures.
- Learning At Your Own Pace:
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Everyone learns at a different pace and regular college lectures hardly accommodate for slow pace learners. If your professors record your lectures you can re-watch those videos that are explaining a more complex topic with sufficient breaks to fully grasp the topic, rather than having to struggle understanding them in one go. On the other hand, if you are already knowledgeable in a topic and do not wish to spend more time on it, you can speed up the recording. Also, attending office hours via Zoom is more convenient and quicker than having to take out time from your schedule and wait in long queues outside your instructor’s office. You can also pick a time that you feel your energetic motivated best and work then, allowing you to be more productive. This way you can customize the way you want to learn.
- All That Extra Time!
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Now that we have established that online classes are basically saving you a ton of time and allowing you to tailor-make your study schedule, what are you going to do with all that free time? Ordinarily college students go out for parties and meet with friends regularly, now that this can’t happen, you can finally start with the activities mentioned in every quarantine-productivity-list you have read like working out, eating healthy, developing a hobby, reading more books or simply spending more time with yourself. As cliché as this sounds, it is true that doing even one of these little things can relax you in these stressful times. You can do everything on that list, or if not, you can do the one most important thing: prioritizing your mental health. Just take some time to sit still and comfortably in your own company and you will realize that solitude isn’t all that bad.
This post is not to make you feel like the pandemic is a blessing in disguise because it is not. People have lost jobs and loved ones in these times, and I am not in any way trying to make light of that fact. It is no doubt that online, or at least hybrid, schooling is the choicest way to minimize the widespread of this virus. So, while the online schooling is here to stay, this post is just an attempt to find a few positives in a sea of negatives so that it motivates us to get up every morning and look forward to work.