At LC, we’ve gone to fully online classes for the two and a half weeks between Thanksgiving and winter break.
One interesting, and often frustrating, aspect of being at home is the time difference. At first, I thought it would be nice. None of my classes start until after 12:00. But I’ve found that there are some drawbacks. First and foremost it can just be confusing. As we approach the end of the semester I’m having more and more meetings with teachers and group members. But the times on the google calendar aren’t always the same time it would be where I am. In one of my groups, there is a five hour time difference between me and one group member, obviously, that makes scheduling hard. We all have jobs and families and lives so finding a time that doesn't have conflict and isn’t ridiculously early or late is hard. I was just on a zoom call until quarter to midnight.
The other thing is that my classes normally end between 3 and 7, immediately eating up the part of the day where I would usually do homework. That means I often end up doing homework until very late in the night. My new schedule basically starts and noon and ends at 3 or 4 in the mourning so it’s turning me into a bit of a vampire.
In terms of actually learning, fully online classes have turned out to be not too hard. We had a lot of foundation that we established during our in-person classes really helped especially in french. I already know what I need to to understand what's going on in class. At this point in the semester, we’re mostly doing review and final projects. That being said I am nervous about online final exams.
The hardest thing about being back at home is missing the friends I made at LC. It was hard to make friends with the pandemic, but there were some people I became really close to, and being apart from them has been difficult.
Lewis and Clark was like a different world. Everyone there was there for one purpose, school. Our jobs and our social lives were built around that but back here things get messier. My friends and family all have different lives and jobs. It's hard to put school back in the middle of that.