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Changzhou, China

After school, I needed to do farm work and cook dinner. After that, I have to do the dishes too. I couldn’t start doing school work until 8 p.m. At that time, I was a big fan of Maths, so I often stayed up past midnight to solve tricky math problems. Sometimes, I got really sleepy so I fell asleep with candles lit. When the candles melted, the desk would catch fire—this happened three times. Every time I managed to save my Math book first. I’d cry really loud if I see the book was burnt broken. I didn’t think of anything else. 

Notre Dame, IN

I miss the high stress of finals. I used to love how everyone would stress out together and we wouldn’t sleep at all. Now it’s just me, but at least I’m sleeping, mainly because all my finals are take home and spread out and I had 3 finals week and one due the week before and they’re all papers and due Mon, Wed, Fri evening/night. I miss my friends. I miss getting lunch with people. I miss my bed and room and school bc I have an amazing mattress topper and a really nice single. I miss parties with friends. I miss all the fun that used to happen and make school more of an enjoyable experience rather than just school y nada más. I miss having access to more clothes rather than just what I packed which are winter clothes and it is no longer winter. I miss bonding experiences with friends and the choir tour I would have gone on to Italy and Slovenia for which I still get STEP emails for. I miss campus food. Ya I miss like everything, but most of all, I miss social interaction.

Zagreb, Croatia

I can’t sleep during the night because of anxiety, so I sometimes oversleep and miss the lecture. Other times I can’t concentrate for the full 3-hour lecture. This all feels overwhelming. 

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 Since the switch to online classes, I’ve failed out and withdrawn from the course.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