Most international students took a breath of relief after being informed that this fall semester will be in person. I’m sure each and every one of us is looking forward to the day when we will be learning in person in classrooms.
Even before the pandemic, it was predicted that future generations would possibly get their education online. We really did not expect it would be us, the millennials and generation Zs, who would be graduating or completing our courses online.
Many of us grew up without much influence from technology. I got my first cell phone when I was about 17, after I literally begged my parents, while my youngest sibling got it when he was just 11, without any begging. It was not easy for everyone to break off from their social habits, which is what has made everyone around the planet go a bit stir crazy over the past 12 months.
We humans have always advanced, changed, and got better by adapting ourselves in difficult situations. It doesn’t take us much time to get used to any circumstance. Over the past year, I’ve observed this adaptability in myself, in my classmates, and in other international students. We’ve been consistently trying to improve ourselves since the pandemic began.
My classmate Martin, who is a first-year Business Administration student in India, deferred his intake from September 2020 to January 2021 since he was skeptical of online learning, like most of us. “But over these few weeks I have realized that online lectures are not that bad,” he says. “In fact, it is quite convenient in terms of saving a lot of time during the day to do other things.”
Martin is among the few of us who has to attend classes at midnight. “The current class timings are not suitable due to the huge time difference,” he says. “It gets difficult, especially on Thursdays, when there are three lectures during the day, and all at quite odd timings, hence tampering the sleep and productivity on that day.”
“Keeping up with all the quizzes, assignments, and taking care of time difference at times becomes really difficult, moreover, it takes a toll on health because of the shift in the body clock,” says Pallavi, who is also a first-year Business Administration student from India.
All the staff and professors at Camosun understand our situation and are doing their best. One of our professors makes sure to wish us good evening while wishing good morning at the same time.
It gets really difficult when we all are working on assignments that require us to understand the scenario in Victoria or in Canada in general. So, it’s not wrong to say that sometimes we feel devoid of the hands-on experience of the social and cultural environment that locals are already aware of.
In the end, we know we have to get through this phase, because soon we all are going to meet each other on campus.