It would be a gross understatement to say that the coronavirus pandemic has changed our lives for the worse. As selfish as it may sound, the pandemic has destroyed everything that was good about human interaction and experience. It has made everyone miss the things we took for granted, like traveling, going out to dinner, and sharing a smile with a stranger on the street. As an eighteen year old, I miss all of these things, but what I feel most robbed of, is not only the end of my senior year of high school, but my first semester of college. These are supposed to be the best times of your life, you’re supposed to grow and make these amazing life long memories that you can tell your kids about. All I have to tell of these pivotal times in my life is the many zoom calls I attended and Netflix shows I binged watched. Sorry for sounding so pessimistic, but I guess you could say I’ve been holding in my rage for quite some time now. Don’t worry, this blog post isn’t going to be a 1100 word rant on why I hate this pandemic. Instead I will be discussing how the pandemic has affected my learning and educational process.
What I Wish I had Known Before The Online Learning Transition Began
One day I was celebrating a long weekend because they were cleaning the school to protect us from the new virus....
the next I’m praying I can go back to school because I’m not learning like I used to. There are a few things I wish I knew before I started doing remote learning.
1. It would be for a lot longer than I thought, so don’t start slacking just because you think it’s gonna be over soon
At the start of the pandemic I thought classes were going to go back to normal soon and I could just catch up then, since I learn better in an actual classroom setting. I started studying less, stopped taking notes and doing my homework assignments… who was checking those anyways? (When the pandemic started my high school did not have a platform like BlackBoard where assignments could be submitted, some teachers had us send assignments through email). After a month I realized this was a bad idea, and got super anxious because I did not know what was going on in most of my classes.
2. Just because it's an “online class” does not mean it is an easy or frivolous class. Take it just as seriously as you would an in person class.
This goes along with the first idea in that I did not realize the validity of these classes because they seemed so trivial to me, I was literally in bed taking a test or attending class, how serious could it be? I started to lose focus and my strong work ethic I once had, because I did not feel like I was really even going to school. My grads began to suffer because of this.
3. It's going to be a lot more self teaching and application.
I preface this by saying that I appreciate every educator during this pandemic. I know they have been working around the clock to try to come up with ways to connect with and effectively teach their students through this new online platform. Their efforts were not completely lost to me, I just learn better in a classroom setting where I can be more engaged and feel more comfortable to ask questions whenever I get lost. Because of this, I felt that in most (not all) of my classes I was left to not only study, but teach myself the material because I did not absorb any information during the zoom class. I found this to be the most difficult part of the transition to remote learning. Now this may just be how college is, since I have nothing to compare it to I’ve only ever been to college during a pandemic in a hybrid or all remote setting, but from what I’ve heard and experienced from the high school transition to online learning, I believe the pandemic is mostly to blame.
Troubleshooting During Online Learning
Speaking of having to teach myself a lot of the material I was learning, during my first month of nursing school, I was not doing as well as I thought I would. I was really struggling in my anatomy labs and since we couldn’t work with partners, we mostly just watched videos on YouTube of people explaining various structures of the body. I was not able to engage or learn as well as I would have in normal circumstances. I was not doing well on my weekly lab quizzes, so I decided I needed to do more to help myself learn the material. I purchased an anatomy coloring book online in hopes that this would help stimulate my memory and help me learn the different structures I was being tested on. I was very reluctant to do this as coloring and art are not really my things, but I was happily surprised to discover that it actually did help. I ended up doing much better on my following quizzes. I realized that how I used to learn in class and study may not be applicable to online learning, and was able to adapt.
My Biggest Takeaways
While the coronavirus pandemic may not remain in my memory as the most precious or happy times of my life, I did learn some valuable lessons from it. As explained above, I learned how to adapt and learn in new ways when I face challenges in the classroom. I can take these skills with me throughout the rest of my academic career, as I’m sure even without the pandemic I will need to be able to adapt to difficult material and learning situations. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I have learned to appreciate the little things in life. I used to hate sitting in class and would dream of just crawling back to my bed, I used to opt for take-out as a more convenient way to get my meals, I thought it was weird to smile at a complete stranger, and I thought I had so much time to make memories and experience all that life has to offer. Because of the coronavirus I’ve learned to appreciate the things I once took for granted, and not to waste any time making memories…. because after all, we never know when we won’t be able to do the things we never realized we loved so much anymore. So for all that I despise the pandemic for, I am grateful for the lessons it has taught me.
......okay but I will be jubilant when the vaccine is distributed to everyone and we can all start enjoying our lives again.
Thanks for reading,
Liv