Written by Louis Verderame

Published on April 3, 2020

Making the shift to online classes is not as simple as a gear shift on a car. It’s not as simple as sitting in class listening to a professor teach you. Some people use school to escape, use it as a way to get out of the house. The separation between the two is crucial in all of our lives. So what happens when your ideas and aspirations become locked, not only inside your mind but in the four walls of your bedroom, when your home life becomes your whole life? 

These past few months, I mean weeks…it’s only been two weeks?! It feels like so much longer. Being quarantined is one thing, but having to do school work on top of that is another. You would think, “okay, I have nothing else to do. This ‘doing school at home’ will be easy.” The reality is that the unspoken and unwanted thought by the majority of students is that the structure of school is actually crucial to our learning. Giving us a place to go and a place to be motivated is so important in learning. 

Being at home is great. You’re comfortable, you have all your favorite things around you. That is the downfall of all of this. I’d rather watch TV than sit in my room and do homework. I’d rather do ANYTHING else, than motivate myself to do my schoolwork. “Well you do school work at home. It’s called homework.” In reality, you do the homework to get the satisfaction of handing it in and completing it and getting a grade back on it in person. Now, you complete an assignment and then send an email. There is just an emptiness to it. 

This all feels like the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. It’s the same routine. If you’re like me, you wake up wanting the day to be different. Though you put on a different shirt, it’s still the same. Cabin fever is real. I’m playing solitaire on my computer. I’m playing my drums and my guitar; and would you look at that, only 20 minutes have gone by. 

I wish I had some concrete advice to give to anyone reading this. The fact is, I don’t. I hate this just as much as the next person. I wake up unmotivated and sit at my computer unmotivated. I do my work to the best of my ability and get it done. Everyday feels like it’s raining, even more so when the sun pours through my window because I know I can’t go anywhere and enjoy it with my friends. 

I lied; there is one thing that is motivating me. One thing. It’s the fact that we only have a month to go with these online classes. The outbreak is another battle, but one battle at a time. We are almost there.  Hang on, and do the work the best you can. You, me, we all will get through this.