I won’t lie. At this time last year, if someone had told me I would be spending the last year of my undergraduate degree sitting in the same uncomfortable desk chair I haven’t gotten around to replacing, studying the last required courses to graduate from behind a computer, well, I would have laughed in their face. Yet, here we are, 10-months (or over a year, depending on when you consider the official start of the COVID-19 pandemic) into online learning, and it still hasn’t gotten easier, at least for me anyway.
I had accepted my fall term would be online after the rushed move to online learning in the winter term of the 2019-2020 school year, when my summer abroad was cancelled and when my other summer courses moved online. However, I had hoped that things would have settled down by Christmas of 2020, or, at the very least, people would be following the rules enough to make in-person classes for the winter term of 2020-2021 a possibility.
That is obviously not the case.
As of the writing of this article, Western has delayed the start of any in-person classes until at least after Reading Week. My affiliate (King’s) has already announced that our courses will be “exclusively virtual face-to-face and online” for the rest of the winter term. Thus, the likelihood of me actually returning to campus at any point in the foreseeable future is nonexistent.
I only had one class that had been preparing for the possibility of in-person lectures if it became safe for us to return to campus. That one class was one I knew was going to be difficult, even in-person, and so the thought of possibly not having to sign into Zoom University at least one day a week to learn was a blessing. Now, with the final possibility of getting to set foot on campus for university classes fully out of my grasp, I’m left with the dread of completing not only another fully online semester, but the final semester of my BA virtually.
Before this year, I had always considered myself someone who was fairly well-versed in time management, or at the very least, could get by in my online classes. But, this move to being fully virtual, and the problems it has brought along, like technological problems, lack of clear communication and the feeling that there is just too much expected of us, has made me question just how good a student I actually am.
Most days, I wake up too tired to really focus on my school work, and the eye strain that has resulted from almost doubling my screen-time (even with blue-light reducing glasses and/ or filters) has made the mediocracy of my days even harder to bear. I know that we are all just trying to figure this out and survive, but sometimes, it seems impossible to really determine just how much I’ve managed to accomplish with a to-do list that never shrinks and the days blending into one another.
In essence, the expectation to be productive and “go on as normal” in our “new normal” is pretty ridiculous, and I kind of wish there was more acknowledgment of this fact.
While I know some students are thriving studying at home, largely at their own pace, I—and I’m sure many others—are glaring down the barrel of another fully online semester with dread.
I’m holding out that there are positives that come out of the struggle that has been a semester online, and will be an entire year online after this coming term: a better sense of my work ethic, the rediscovery of my passions or even a much-needed redirection towards a better goal than I expected. But right now, I’m trying to take it day by day and remember that while it might seem like I struggle alone, there are hundreds and thousands of other students feeling the same way. With the dread of another online semester, all I can do is take care of myself and those around me the best way I can in our incredibly virtual world.
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