Due to the pandemic, the world put a hold on everything, but we couldn’t afford to put a hold on our dreams.
Apparently, this is the reason why many international students still went on to enrol themselves in colleges and universities around the world, attending online classes from their home countries. Myself, I’m currently taking Camosun classes while in India.
How difficult can this be? You save money on expenses and you are in the comfort of your own home. But do you understand everything in the class? Maybe, maybe not. Do you sleep at night? Absolutely not.
A day before my classes were about to commence, the first thing I did was I Googled “PST to IST time converter” and converted all my class times. It was obvious that I’d have classes at night, mostly up to midnight, but, to my amusement, I realized I had a class at 2 am.
I shared this plight with my other Indian and Pakistani classmates; after two months, we’ve somehow advanced from being all dark circles to being night owls, half asleep but trying our best to understand everything in class. We’re up all night: I feel like we should be charging our families for night patrolling our homes.
It’s true that most of the students I see online have messy hair and no pants on while attending classes, which is comfortable and convenient, but we all really do miss the idea of being with our classmates and of learning face to face.
Maybe in the future we’ll miss these times, so we must definitely make the most of them now. I am sure all the pandemic hardship will pay off, for good, for everyone. We’re all quite anxious these days and we can see that the number of mental-health issues are increasing. In fact, looking at my personal experience, in the first few weeks I suffered from various episodes of anxiety and panic due to lack of sleep. What did I do about it? At our orientation, we were introduced to a 24/7 mental-health-counselling app with free texting and calling services called Here2Talk. I accessed the Here2Talk app and texted some really nice counsellors twice and it really helped me get a different perspective of my situation and learn about ways to help me cope. If anyone feels they are dealing with a lot of stress and need a non-judgmental opinion or conversation then please do not ever hesitate to reach out through an app like this or through whatever means you have available to you.
Still, even with these tools available to us and even trying to look on the bright side of things, whenever my class ends at 4 am, I wish all this would end soon so all of us can exchange smiles or notes in person and we can attend classes during the day, instead of the middle of the night.