Apparently, COVID is over. Never mind those still sick or suffering; instead, rejoice! For in the year of our lord 2025, we have decided COVID is gone! With the end of COVID, we reached the end of our so-called “new normal” of online work, online school, and pajamas all day.
So it’s just normal now. Yes, the pandemic was miserable and it was hard work, too, but we worked together putting so many things that were previously not online onto the internet. We created sites and apps streamlining everything so we could all continue in our day-to-day lives with the minor add-on of never leaving the house.
We did so much work and for what? So that just a few years after the pandemic we could throw all of it out, of course.
This seems to be how things are going now. Amazon has ordered its employees back to work, and so has, ironically, the star of the pandemic, Zoom. Most universities and colleges have followed suit and stopped putting all but essential information online. Recordings of lectures, a large portfolio of online classes, and, really, everything but the textbook has left the virtual world.
Never mind those of us who were left with lifelong conditions from the infectious disease. Never mind the disabled who finally could partially relax knowing they wouldn’t miss anything critically important from class when they were too sick to come in.
Complaints have returned to normal, too. Much fuss was made during COVID over the apparent newfound phenomenon of lazy students. Yes, we all had a day where we drank too much or stayed up too late the night before and tuned into a lecture barely dressed and barely present. Is this any different from the rate that students skip classes without online options? Have we honestly been any less lazy since going offline?
We should think carefully before tossing aside the convenience of having nearly everything from a class available at a moment’s notice. We’ve forgotten the ability to be enraptured in a lecture not overly concerned with taking notes, knowing we can re-listen to it later.
This is to say nothing of those who are sick or chronically ill, and those, who through no fault of their own, have to miss many classes during a semester. Do we now just toss them aside, allowing many online resources and lectures to be nonexistent?
With online resources made optional, overworked instructors have to go out of their way to add them, making every class a gamble as to what the professor may choose to put online.
I understand that recording lectures, posting slides, et cetera, is an extra workload, but surely we have solutions. For example, we can have a student set up a cell phone with a group Zoom call so those who can’t make it in to class still have an opportunity to learn.
Losing online services means losing students who pick other universities who still offer those services, and it means losing students who cannot come in person every day.
So I say bring back online classes, bring back online lectures, bring back my COVID-given right to stay out too late drinking, get horribly sick, and listen to a lecture recording while cuddled up in bed regretting my life choices.