I miss in person classes and feeling like I am on a schedule and on top of my assignments. I also miss living at college and being in an environment where everyone is doing the same things as me. It is more motivating being surrounded by students instead of being home where I’m the only kid still having a lot of school work. I also miss just being with my friends and having fun doing things that have nothing to do with class or grades.
My independence is the biggest one. I miss my casual acquaintances that I’m not “friends” with but still enjoy chatting with occasionally. I miss my professors’ being able to read the room through our body language and understand if we are with them/understand the concept they’re explaining.
I feel like I have been robbed of my first-year college experience. I was just getting into the college groove. The cost of school is a struggle and now I have enormous student loans for basically hanging out at home and randomly checking into my “classes” for a pass/fail grade: Not at all what I signed up for or agreed to pay thousands of dollars for.
I miss the walks to class to clear my head, running into people on campus, the unexpected parts of the day that come from being in a crowd of people, e.g., who you might see or what you might experience, completing group or hands-on projects, conferences or meetings, the camaraderie of sporting events, sitting in a lecture to listen in on the info while last-minute completing another assignment and the adrenaline rush that comes with it, or just sitting to listen to get a break in your day when you don’t have to run to the next thing, talking to customers at my part-time coffeehouse job or meeting friends after class at a coffee shop, having a personal connection with professors whether working on a project or hearing about how their kids are doing. Basically, all the best parts of school and education are taken from us (collaboration, the challenge of learning, being amongst other learners on campus) and we have just been left to do the crappy parts.
