A Personal Experience: Adjusting to Online Learning

Photo Credit/ Pixabay

Max Auguliaro

Assistant News Editor

With the Covid-19 Pandemic and the new routines that come with it, life is almost unrecognizable. 

When toilet paper wasn’t a hot commodity, in-person concerts and movie going was still a thing, and no one is sporting a mask at their own will. 

Life, how it used to be, is becoming an increasingly distant memory.

Along with the changes in professional, personal, and social life to come from this pandemic, students all over the country (and the world as well) found their scholastic life turned upside down.

The implementation of Stay-At-Home orders meant that colleges had to abruptly send students home for the rest of the semester, and K-12 schools had to close their doors to students as well.

As a commuter, going home for the semester did not affect me in terms of my living situation because I was already home.

However, to say that my transition to online learning was easy overall is incorrect.

One thing that I will make clear right off the bat is that I HATE online classes.

I always felt that online classes, as opposed to in person classes, would be harder because the lack of in-person instruction makes it harder to connect and communicate.

This is personally helpful to me because I know I need that little push in order to get a lot of my schoolwork done and I know I am not the only one who works like this.

Online classes also require a lot more attention than in-person classes for the same reasons.  

Attention that I could otherwise use for other things, including my hobbies, and my much harder classes.

I had to drop an online class at the start of last semester, because I already knew that I would struggle to keep up with the work in it.

As most of my classes turned to Zoom last spring, the synchronous method did help me keep up with the assignments that I might have otherwise forgotten about, but I still had an attention problem.

I almost failed a class I was otherwise doing fantastic in, simply because I overlooked the new attendance policy.

I thought the Zoom sessions that the professor hosted were the required lecture for the course, but it was actually the recorded lectures that required you to answer a question at the end of it that I needed to do in order to be counted as present for the lecture.

I ended up missing a lot of them to the point that, had the professor not granted students extra time to turn them in, I would have failed for too many absences.  It was a huge wakeup call that I needed at the time.

I also missed being on campus last semester, simply for having a quiet place to study. 

 ESU’s campus has a lot of places where one can do work quietly, and in a loud and distracting household like mine, peace and quiet helps me be productive. 

So, I missed having that option after everyone was sent home.

Other things I miss about the in-person experience is the opportunity to have a conversation with my professors one-on-one without a screen between us, having breaks in between classes to grab a coffee at Wawa and just being around friends in class.

The switch was also big enough for me to pause my participation in The Stroud Courier, and I sure did miss writing articles for this great organization!

However, I was able to finish off the semester on a high note, and I do feel like I am in a better place this semester to deal with everything thrown at me, and I hope my fellow students feel the same way!

Email Max at:

maugugliar@live.esu.edu