With Southern California continuing to be a hot spot for the coronavirus, I’m grateful to not be returning back to school in person. As a transfer student, I spent the past three years at community college, waiting for this moment to finally come to a big university.
Even though I’m bummed about the semester being online and have my concerns regarding remote learning, I think it’s ultimately the best option for the time being.
Obviously, it’s disappointing, and obviously I want in-person classes. I’ve never voluntarily taken online classes, in-person classes force me to sit down for a given amount of time, focus and allow me to connect and get direct help from my peers and professors.
I want the typical college experience like everyone else, and remote delivery doesn’t allow for that. However, I also understand that sometimes in life, things happen outside of our control and we have no choice but to deal with it.
You could argue that college students are not at risk for the virus, and because of that we should return. As the virus persists, though, the infection of younger people is becoming more and more frequent, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
What about the students with auto-immune diseases that place them in the high-risk category? Or those who commute to campus and would risk exposing the virus to their families and hometowns?
I’ve seen plenty of college students posting Snapchats of pool parties and birthday gatherings. It is impossible to force people to follow the rules and guidelines for this pandemic, and, if we returned, students would more than likely socialize outside of any social distancing regulations that the campus could try and sanction.
So, given the situation, I think the school made the best decision it could by choosing remote learning for the fall semester.
Who knows, maybe distance learning will be what finally forces me to learn better time-management skills and become more self-disciplined.
Online learning will definitely be difficult to navigate, but some good could come out of it, too. If we all commit to suffering just one term online, we can hopefully resume our normal lives come spring semester.