Notre Dame, IN
Oh my gosh “are there things I miss?”, of course there are things I miss! I miss literally everything! I miss my old personality and my usual self and the more energy I had rather than being a sloth and beating myself up for not having enough energy. I miss my friends and people most of all, and physical touch. I am oh so lonely, I barely see my roommate and haven’t carried out a conversation with a real life person since the first week of school. If I do talk to people, it’s over the phone or over Zoom or FaceTime. But I also have kind of avoided being in contact with people to the extent I usually was because they always want to know where I am or how I’m doing and I don’t enjoy explaining that I don’t have a good home situation and am therefore not at home. Like I like to pretend I’m fine and have resources and am happy. But that’s kind of hard so I haven’t been reaching out as much because I don’t want to expose myself and people to ask me questions.
New Haven, CT
Overall, I’m not learning anything. At all. It is a huge waste of time and money. I’m lucky I’m still in my undergraduate because the upper level classes that I’ll need to eventually take do not translate well online. I wish I could still be living at school, seeing my friends on a daily basis, being involved on campus, going to the gym, going out with friends, having movie nights, etc. I miss the way my life was. It was perfect. I had all my shit together and in a blink of an eye, everything that mattered to me shifted so drastically it was unrecognizable. I even miss my two on-campus jobs. I miss the routine of everything, the feelings of accomplishment I would get after having a successful board meeting for one of the organizations I was involved in. If classes are online for another semester, assuming it does not affect my scholarships or financial aid, I am highly considering taking a semester off until everything is back to normal.
Seaside, CA
I loved all my classes before we shifted online, and now I can’t focus or get myself to do the work. It’s not the same because all these classes require active participation and discussions. Our syllabus has been shifted around, certain things are no longer counted, and attendance is not mandatory anymore. I’m just not motivated to do anything. It’s not the same when you can’t discuss in person, and when you don’t have a room of your own to go to for class or work.
Fresno, CA
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.
Indiana, PA
I think that for classes where you are lecturing, Zoom can work really well because it’s just transmitting information from a PowerPoint or a paper like a typical class. However, in my experience, in-class discussion has been a disaster, everyone talks over one another and you can tell we aren’t as focused. Also, nobody really cares about discussion. We just want to get it over with.