It’s one thing to be an online student by choice; it’s quite another to have the situation thrust upon us, as we have in this pandemic. We went from being carefree and crowded on campus—happy as anything to shake hands with a stranger or walk arm in arm with a friend to class—to having classes go digital, with very little contact at all with the world outside our own homes. Many of us have lost work and hours, yet still have rent and bills to pay. However, these real-life problems seem exponentially larger given the stress of the other things to watch out for—for instance, contracting a scary contagious virus that is killing people all over the planet.
I haven’t set foot on a Camosun campus in ages, but I have images of birds nesting and of wild animals hibernating in the buildings that used to be where we got our educations. I really have to hand it to everyone involved in still trying to make the systems move and tick. All of my profs have adapted beautifully, given that some of these classes are not made for at-home, away-from-other-people curriculums. Yet students and instructors—all of them—have discovered that kindness, patience, a sense of humour, and the inner, desperate need for human connection can go a long way in making almost anything work, even in classes that generally depend so much on person-to-person interaction.
I look forward to the small interaction I have with my online classmates once a week with the same sort of anticipation I have when I’m expecting something really great in the mail: after all, it’s that wonderful reminder that that life is still out there, and that maybe other people are feeling these feelings too.
We know it’s important to try to keep a regular schedule, to keep deadlines, to keep finding joy in the everyday. However, at this point we’re probably all feeling that the everyday seems a bit much—don’t they all just melt into each other now? This is why, again, I have to come back and congratulate everyone—all of us—who are managing (some days better than others) to keep going forward and to keep coming to class with effort, suggestions, laughter, and curiosity.
These are the days we will look back on and say, hey, I made it through that. I made it through COVID-19, and all the crap that surrounded it.
I can do anything.