The Nut­shell: Tran­si­tion­ing to On­line Classes

MISHAWAK, IN – This week, we asked stu­dents through email, “How are you feel­ing about the new on­line classes and how is it af­fect­ing your col­lege ex­pe­ri­ence?” The stu­dents have asked to re­main anony­mous.  

“It sucks. To put it plainly and sim­ply, that is the best word I have found to de­scribe this en­tire [sit­u­a­tion]. I want some­one to blame--the in­sti­tu­tion, so­ci­ety, peo­ple in gen­eral, but at the end of the day, this is no one's fault and per­haps that is what makes it so in­cred­i­bly frus­trat­ing. I did­n't think I would ever be af­fected by Corona, and now we are liv­ing in a world where every­one has been touched by it. I want it to be over,” one stu­dent said. “I want to be back in my fa­vorite class­rooms. I even want DC food again be­cause that would mean I would be in the home I have been build­ing over the last cou­ple of years. Be­ing ripped away from every­thing so un­ex­pect­edly is dif­fi­cult. Classes feel like busy­work that never ends and hon­estly, I don't feel like I am learn­ing much of any­thing. And again, it's the same thing in that it is no one's fault; this just is­n't how it is sup­posed to be. Yet here we all are, re­spec­tively six feet apart and try­ing to make the best of a new ‘nor­mal’ that is very much new and not at all nor­mal.” 

“This new on­line school­ing is tough on stu­dents as well as teach­ers,” a dif­fer­ent stu­dent said. “Es­pe­cially [con­sid­er­ing] how ur­gently it was pushed on every­one. At the end of the day this is not the ideal learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment for some stu­dents, and I did­n’t pay tu­ition to do col­lege like this. It’s been re­ally stress­ful try­ing to get or­ga­nized every day when I’m re­ceiv­ing 30 dif­fer­ent alerts from my email and the Can­vas app. Most of my teach­ers are in­con­sis­tent when it comes to where they put an­nounce­ments and as­sign­ments. Some email, oth­ers use can­vas, and one uses her own wiki page to try to di­rect every­thing. This whole thing is one big mess and I’m go­ing to end up do­ing badly be­cause of it. It has def­i­nitely had a ma­jor im­pact on my men­tal health and not in a pos­i­tive way. I’m hop­ing Bethel fig­ures out a way where no­body gets hurt in the end, but I don’t see that hap­pen­ing sadly.”