Friday: In my continuing series of CoronaWorld oral histories, I interview The Girlfriend’s son, a junior at a private university in the Northeast majoring in visual arts and technology. I edited our 30-minute conversation for clarity.
Me: Describe the transition in your semester once CoronaWorld arrived.
Student: It wasn’t so bad. It was easier since we started in the middle of a semester; we’d already made connections. The first week, we were learning Zoom and how to bring the classrooms online. There was confusion, but we could still easily ask questions and not be shy in front of the professors since we already knew them. If it had been, let’s say, a first class in the fall, it would have been more difficult.
A bonus for me is that I’m teaching a class in Zoom. It’s an after-school coding class for middle-school kids. So I know both ends, as a host and a participant in the system. Learning the host end of Zoom made it easier for me to be in Zoom classes.
Me: Why?
Student: I know what the teachers can and can’t do, what they do and don’t know. Can the teacher view my screen? Which breakout rooms can the teacher put me into? I know what I can do for my students, so I know what my teachers can do for me. But not everyone has had that opportunity.
Me: You had to leave your dorm room suddenly. Was that hard?
Student: I guess. It was a pain to move everything — we brought some things home, put some things in storage. I thought it was going to be harder to live at home, but my mom moved out, so I can stay in her bedroom. I’d say it’s working pretty well.
Me: What’s been difficult about moving to online classes?
Student: Getting into a routine has been the hardest part. The first few weeks, it was hard to get into a rhythm. I mean, I can wake up 5 minutes before my class, then take the class in bed. I don’t have to get clean, get dressed, commute 5 or 30 minutes or whatever. So I know people are staying up late and sleeping late. Being able to take the class anywhere is an added convenience, but it may cause people to develop strange sleeping habits.
Photo copyright junpinzon
Me: Was it causing you to develop strange sleeping habits?
Student: Umm, yeah. I’d stay up until 5 a.m., then wake up 5 minutes before class. So getting into a routine that didn’t destroy my sleep schedule was important for Zoom learning. Like today: I woke up at 9, made breakfast, and was fully awake for my 2 o’clock class.
Then some professors don’t require you to use your camera. You can sleep through class, or half listen, or be on your phone the whole time. So one good thing is that four of my professors require all of us to be on face cam. But my sociology class has 150 people, and big lecture classes don’t require face cams. Then again, in the physical class, half of the people toward the back of the room are on their phones the whole time, too — that’s just a thing that happens. So this might increase people being on their phone a bit, but it’s not that different.
Another problem for me has been bandwidth and wifi. When everything is digital, at any moment you can lose connection. We had one rainy, stormy day when we couldn’t make Zoom calls. And for classes that use Google Dox, if the wifi’s down we can’t connect to our documents, can’t do projects, can’t communicate at all. Sometimes things slow down at night, when I think more people are streaming. That’s when reliance on technology feels like an over-reliance. If you can’t connect any other way, you’re stuck — no one’s in their physical offices.
Me: Has anything been better about online learning?
Student: I’ve been getting on Zoom calls and emailing more with my professors since all of this started, because they have more free time and it’s easier to meet. Some have extended their office hours, or provided five ways for us to contact them digitally. So I’m reaching out more often, getting more help with projects.
Also, when we’re in online classes, I like using the gallery view to see everyone’s faces at once. I’m pretty good at reading people’s moods. It’s easier than in a physical space, since you have the benefit of squishing everyone’s face into one screen rather than having to twist and turn and look all around the room. So that’s a plus.
Me: Has the move to digital learning affected your performance?
Student: I think I’m doing about the same. Maybe a little worse. What’s nice is that the deadlines are more lenient. Most of my teachers have been super helpful. In some classes I might be a bit behind because they’ve been more lenient. We can take any class this semester Pass/Fail, which means I could get a D and still pass, which means I don’t have to try as hard. But the school is making allowances because they don’t know your living conditions, or if you’re sick, or have family members who are sick. So many things are out of whack, they’re making it easier on us.
Me: How has moving to digital learning affected how you teach?
Student: Where I teach, everyone has to use face cams and use screen sharing. That’s useful because: 1). I can see what projects they’re doing and make sure they’re not goofing off; and 2). I can look at their code and help them directly.
For the students, I think the first week was a lot harder. We did a pre-check, what we called Week Zero, to make sure everyone’s Zoom calls were working and they understood the interface. But we had a lot of no-shows. We reached out through email to the students to find out if they could still make the class. There were a lot of reasons: some were sick; some had parents sick; someone had moved overseas; a lot couldn’t find the Zoom links. A lot of parents got flooded with coronavirus emails, from work or school or wherever: 15 tips on how to avoid the virus, 10 ways to stay healthy while staying at home, whatever. So ours got buried with all the others. We ended up calling a lot of parents.
So the first couple of weeks were hard; we had to do a lot of hand-holding. But now that we’ve gotten into a routine, it’s not so bad.
It helps to learn little tricks. With Zoom, you can only use screen sharing on one tab at a time, so if the students have other tabs open those stay hidden. One day a student told me, “Yeah, I’m working on my project.” And I said, “I can hear you playing Roblox on another tab.” It helps that they’re 12 years old, and their strategies aren’t always the smartest.
Me: Have you felt cut off from friends during CoronaWorld?
Student: In some ways I’m more connected to people. I’ve found ways to connect, through Zoom or Discord or Skype or phone calls. Because I can’t see them in person, I’m making up for it twice as much. The people I know, everyone is finding ways to connect digitally that they never thought about before. That includes things without face cams. Like, people are joining text-based chatrooms and communicating that way. Even after people can meet in person, I think they’re definitely going to be communicating digitally a lot more.
For the most part, I’m ok with the digital realm. And this has felt in some ways like a big summer break, when I’m away from school and communicating with my friends online. I love summer break. Still, when I’m in school, I want to go to class, I want to have that human interaction — as much as sometimes I despise my classes, I miss the physical interaction with others.
Me: If you have to do online learning in the fall, what will be your reaction?
Student: Luckily for me, my major is visual arts and technology, which is a very small group. In most of my classes, I’ll know 90 percent of the students. There are majors with a lot more people — engineering, say — who won’t have that luxury. Plus I’ll be a senior. I think if you’re a freshman or a sophomore in one of the bigger majors and you have to start the year on Zoom, that will be especially difficult. But I think I’ll know most of the people in my classes, and most of the professors.
Me: Anything else notable that I haven’t asked you about?
Student: In CoronaWorld, it’s easy to be in a rut: eat, sleep, Zoom, repeat. If you’re not doing those things, you’re watching Netflix or YouTube or on social media. You’re stuck with online activities; you can’t go to the park, or a café, or the movies.
I know I’ve been lucky because I’m definitely eating nicer meals. Sometimes I cook; I’m probably eating more takeout than usual. But either way, I’ve noticed I’m more productive on days when I have good meals. I don’t know specifically about the correlation between eating well and general mood or abilities, but it has to be positive. I’ve thought about students who don’t have access to good markets, or maybe are having a hard time financially and can’t eat well — I’m sure it affects their work. I know I can’t work on an empty stomach.
(New York state numbers on Friday: 330,407 diagnosed with Covid-19, up 0.9 percent; 217 dead, to a total of 21,045, up 1 percent. Overall U.S. deaths: 1,734, to a total of 71,434, up 2.5 percent.)
I'm establishing an oral history of the pandemic; previous interviews include with a public college professor, a public middle school student, a private college dean, a public high school teacher, a public bilingual third-grade teacher, a public charter high school teacher, and a couple putting AA meetings on videoconference.
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