In an era, where many have been laid off, due to the growing number of COVID-19 cases. Our normally, lively streets, are deserted; civilization is now an empty muffled presence. The peril of the coronavirus has birthed the normality, brisk pace of life into a crumbling halt; the bustling city now a boring dead silence.
This reality has seized a crash course for online education to the next level. Spending too much time indoors can drive anyone insane, primarily if you’re a student, affected with an effortless to glide into unhealthy practices as the country appears to be falling while keeping your grades above or at standard.
While increasingly rigorous laws measure to keep people distant are placed in isolation to delay the spread of the COVID-19. Mental health experts cautioning that dissipating everyday social connections arises with psychological drawbacks, mainly the effect on students; being that education has dramatically shifted to fully relying on computers and digital calls.
I caught up with Angelique Kokal, a former sophomore student at Harvard University, to discuss how and why online education has ceased her and other students’ awakening opportunity of moving onto the next step in education.
How did it feel when the education system decided to transfer learning online?
AK: So at my school Harvard. All of us students got kicked out of campus during the spring term of last year, which made everything abrupt at first. Everyone who lived on campus who had to evacuate was given a 3-day notice due to COVID-19. It was honestly very chaotic, plus the professors did not have much time to adapt to online learning, so I think a lot of the classes were quite anarchic because of that. Despite, now that they’ve had time to alter and transition to the “new way of learning” (for now), the environment is a lot more interactive and engaging, but, of course, zoom fatigue is a thing for all of us. It’s a lot harder to retain information when learned through a screen rather than in-person, but I think they’re slowly making it more effective than it was before.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced during online learning?
AK: The biggest challenge is the time-zone difference, as one who lives in HST, 8 hours away from Boston. However, this fall semester, as one who’s an early bird, it’s not as challenging as I thought it’d be. Being that my classes are at 9 am, thankfully, I wake up very early, giving me an advantage to staying focused even in early mornings. In the spring term of last year, I got the opportunity to stay on campus, and a lot got kicked off. Aside from everything else, communicating with people, aside from back pains during classes, are also one of the faced challenges.
As a student, what’s the most effective way to staying focused despite not being able to be in a traditional classroom environment.
AK: It’s easy to go down the wormhole of doing your work. Doing that all day and every day, not taking any breaks, however, will plummet your chances of staying focused. Although, what helps me stay focused is attempting to staying balanced such as exercising every day, making sure I eat properly, trying to stay healthy outside of class, and taking breaks. Sometimes I will work on homework for 20 minutes, then take a 5-minute break, doing that in intervals helps keep me fresh and focused for sure.
I’m aware that you’re not circulated with fashion, however, do you think the COVID-19 is drastically plummeting the fashion system? If so, how?
AK: It’s funny that you mentioned that because I did do a paper on fashion last semester, fast-fashion and sustainability, giving me a little bit of background. I think because of COVID-19 striking, and people disregarding in-person shopping to a lot of departments and clothing stores. In-person shopping has plummeted, so has the economy in general. But I think online stores like Amazon, SHEIN, Forever21, etc…, they’ve been doing better in most senses, considering it’s the only safe shopping nowadays. And they’ve been able to take advantage of that and use it on their sales. So even though we all see decreases in the market, for in-person clothing stores. Since boredom has increased for many people, they decide to go online shopping for fun, giving the online boutiques more profit.
What are your plans for next semester, considering online learning is still going to be of existence until who knows when.
AK: What you just asked is something that I have been thinking of since the onset of the summer. As you know, I only enrolled for this term of fall 2020 because I did not have time to plan for anything else. To be frank online learning was okay for me in the spring, so I said why not just do it again. But it has been saving my classroom experience for later on. I want to have a socially distanced, in-person job to gain real-world experience. Being that social development experience is an ongoing problem, I think that next term, I probably am not going to enroll in classes because the remote learning environment is not ideal for me. I have also concluded that it’s just not worth it at the moment because I want that in-person experience, so I’m going to work either remote or some other outside job near me. To conclude, primarily the time-zone differences, including other things. We all worked hard to get into college to have that in-person experience.
Potentially, if you were able to change something about the current education system, what would it be and why?
AK: What my school in specific is probably lacking is the consideration for mental health at this time. To emphasize, during the spring semester, administration constituted this policy for emergency satisfactory and unsatisfactory, meaning the doing away with letter grades, making grading less acknowledged, more chaotic, awakening personal crisis. Because of this, we weren’t able to focus as well in school, causing to reinstate policy for normal letter grading this academic year. Because everyone had time to adapt, but I think that adapting to their teaching styles, to make things more interactive it’s still not the same as it was before COVID-19 hitting. If they were more considerate of the fact that students have different time-zones, personal situations at home, and on-campus. The anxiety with everything going on, extending things at drop period for classes. That would give students the legroom they need, decreasing that extra stress, which would help out in the long-run.
Online learning, the biggest obstacle faced a challenge for many students and professors. As the economy’s sudden crash, the appetite of a students’ education has driven to deprivation of hunger. Online education has forced many students’, professors, and staff to face the reality of starvation and depression. Bringing in a new level of stress for many, however, as our world slowly rises up again there are ways to help you feel complete. Such as sitting on your couch or bed eating ice cream while watching Netflix. Become imaginative in discovering ways to stay busy throughout quarantine until the pandemic officially ends, which will hopefully be soon. Until then, the equal success of a student is the most important factor throughout the process of online learning.
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