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Birmingham, AL

Before this semester, I had actually taken a gap due to mental health concerns. This semester was meant to be my “reentry” so to speak but I struggled a lot and every day was a battle. My primary motivator was attendance. If I could just get myself into the right classroom at the right time every day, I would be able to scrape by a passing grade. As soon as we switched to online, I lost everything that I’d worked for. There was no reason to do anything and I could hardly feel the consequences. As my As and Bs became failing grades, I felt even more detached from the situation and unmotivated to fix things. And even when I felt like I should catch up, I was already so overwhelmingly behind that it seemed like there was no point. 

Birmingham, AL

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 Since the switch to online classes, I’ve failed out and withdrawn from the course.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.