Adapting to Online Classes

April 16, 2020

 Dear Diary, 

I am feeling very scared about the upcoming weeks. I am not sure how overwhelming the workload will be for some of my classes, and I am taking 3 major classes at the same time for the first time. I have always studied a lot for my pre-major classes because I used to take them with general education classes which allowed me to focus more on them. Now that I am in the major, I feel the pressure to exceed in all of the classes and I hope I will be able to do so. I have the feeling that now that classes are online and that nobody knows what is going on and how to make this a great experience, some classes' workloads have increased and other people have been telling me the same thing. On Thursday I have my first midterm and I do not know if I am studying enough for it and using the correct methods. I do not have my roommates to compare answers of the practice problems with. 

Something I am content about is the fact that online classes have allowed me to save time from commuting to classes. However, it is kind of sad not to have my housemates around and my friends from the Brazilian Student Association. I think that doing school work is a lot less stressful when you are able to hang out with your friends during the week. Now, there is nothing really interesting happening besides the COVID-19 news so every time I am done with school work, I keep overthinking about the upcoming exams and papers because there really isn’t anything else to think about.

This week, I entered group chats dedicated to two of my classes on GroupMe. I found it helpful since it allowed me to ask questions that I had to other students especially when there is a midterm this week. It also made me feel like I was not alone and that other students were struggling with the same things that I was. This is definitely something I will start doing whenever I take online classes. 

I had my first midterm of this quarter on Thursday. It was an online quiz and even though I took it wearing pajamas and it was “open book”, it was also timed and I could not spend too much time on each question. I did relatively well, but I feel better now because now I know how the next quizzes will work and how to study for them. 

Additionally, I started to run. I realized that staying inside of the house all day everyday was not particularly healthy. Because of this, my boyfriend and I started running every morning wearing our masks. I have not ran for extended periods of time since I was 12! It was hard because I still am really bad at it. However, it felt good to just get out and see the sun and the blue sky. I know this is sad, but I do now enjoy more going to the grocery store because I feel like there are other things going on and other people on the same boat. It also makes me feel like there is something else to do besides studying. 

Lastly, I just wanted to share something I noticed during this quarantine. I was driving to grab our take out food from Chick-fil-a and noticed that I could see mountains covered in snow in the back of the buildings and houses. That view is rarely seen from where I was in Los Angeles and demonstrated how pollution has probably decreased during this pandemic.