I have no motivation now and don’t have the same support nets as before to get help on engineering projects. My motivation is like 5% of what it was before.Thinking about doing the work makes me want to cry and hurt myself. Can’t focus, work routine disrupted, can’t go to normal study places.
It’s really difficult to stay focused on the material when there are so many other distractions in the house. Also, casual communication with my professor and classmates is almost impossible (everything is a formal email or a video call), and so instead of being exciting the work becomes a slog of trying to do the normal course load digitally. I lose focus so easily. I take notes with a pen and paper specifically so that I don’t have the distractions of my computer, and now I can’t avoid going to class.
My favorite class was Chinese and I used to pass with 105%. Since the switch to online classes, I’ve failed out and withdrawn from the course. It’s absolutely miserable trying to speak a foreign language over video call in my opinion, so I stopped attending. Online classes gave me no structure and I pretty quickly lost all semblance of a healthy sleep schedule. Pretty soon I found it impossible to get out of bed for an 11 AM course and slept in. Then as soon as I’d missed the first one, I didn’t care anymore and missed another one. Then I felt like I was so behind that attending made me anxious because I knew I’d be called on and embarrassed, so I skipped three whole weeks of online meetings and failed out.
My motivation before was mostly a problem only because I had so many things to do and my mental health issues made time management hard. Now, my mental health is so bad that it is difficult to find motivation even for a single task due the next day. Sometimes, it takes until the due date for me to have the mental energy to even start.
I have very low motivation during this coronavirus period. I have never been productive when working from my apartment. I have always gone to the library or study rooms to get my work done. Without campus desks, I am wildly less productive. I take much less joy from my classes and therefore feel much less motivation to invest my time in them.
I have to spend 100% more time studying and combing the material to write my essays because I am on my own. Study time was about 6-8hrs a week with in-class, but is now at least 16hrs, sometimes as much as 24hrs per week, with online. Perhaps this is making me a better philosopher, but due to limitations of time I literally spend all of my waking hours either working or doing homework, and a lot of the menial tasks I would do on weekends don’t get done now.
Something interesting is that so many schools have insisted that almost all classes have to be on campus which has actually caused large limitations for the disabled community. This pandemic has shown not only is it possible but rather easy to have classes online. I’m hoping after this more universities and colleges open up to more online options, so that those of us who can’t physically attend can have the same access and opportunities as everyone else.
