For this week, I’d like to reflect on my experience with remote learning.
At first I absolutely hated it. I graduated in 2020, so it kind of screwed over everything about that spring and my teachers were trying to figure it out, quite badly I might add. A few were older and rarely used that type of tech and others just couldn’t teach online. I don’t actually think I learned anything that spring. Moving into my first year of university, it was all still online, but people had the entire summer to adjust and learn it effectively. I think this is where my perspective started to shift. My mom does online university and completed her Masters this way. Due to this I was familiar with the Brightspace format already and that was suddenly a barrier out of the way.
I live quite far from the university meaning that since school is in person, I have an actual commute every day. This seriously tanks my motivation and time in the day. I have to get up earlier, get home later, and sit on the bus forever. With school at home, I could just pull out my laptop and be at school. This allowed me more time to sleep, do homework, and have free time.
Some of my first online classes were asynchronous and I loved it. I could do it at my own pace and most of the time I managed to do it when I had time which was a lot less stressful than blocking out time for it, in my opinion. All of the assignments were at my fingertips and I could technically do them in whatever order if I felt like it. I didn’t do this, but I think I liked having the option and the freedom.
In my second year of university, I also took some online courses. While this was optional as much of school was in person I think, I enjoyed it. It was not the same however, as my online classes took place right after an in person one, so I was at the university anyways. This school year, I am missing online courses dearly. The commute has been kicking my butt and affecting my performance based on feeling like I never get enough sleep and I never have enough time to do anything. Next semester will be worse will every day starting at 8:30 am, but maybe my body will finally get used to it. Not that I was ever a morning person in high school either…