By Evangelos Gourgoulianis
Villager Academics Editor
Iman Scott doesn’t miss COVID. Not the disease, but the time she spent tethered to her computer in a virtual classroom.
“The biggest eye opener for me amid COVID was that I would never get that time back that I had to spend on a computer and in a room all day for almost 24/7,” the fourth-year Stevenson student said about her time navigating a college education through the pandemic.
It has been two-and-a-half years since schools across the globe shut down and switched over to virtual learning because of the outbreak of COVID. The pandemic proved to be challenging for many people, especially for students.
It has been a year since Stevenson has returned to in-person learning, after the entire community had endured virtual learning for a year. Many students despised virtual learning and felt isolated. Other students took full advantage of the transition and maximized their output.
Scott specified why she prefers in-person classes at Stevenson.
“I don’t miss the way I was learning most of the material, which was basically just memorizing information and what I heard some professors call ‘click learning,’” she said.
Other students also missed in-person learning. They hated the isolation, spending entire days staring at their computers with no real human interaction.
David Orenberg, a fourth-year student, is one of those students. He hated the lack of personal interaction with faculty and his fellow students.
“With online classes it was easier to just not pay attention or do something else during the class,” Orenberg said.
The return to campus for in-person learning and activities in the fall of 2021 served as a monumental one, with many students ecstatic to be back on campus unlike ever before. As the pandemic slowly fades away, the stressful process of online learning has become only a mere memory.
On the flipside, fourth-year student Will Murray mentioned one advantage he missed when attending virtual classes.
“Something I miss was just the convenience of being able to roll out of bed and attend class instead of walking across campus.”