Since school has started back up again, I’ve been consistently thinking about how my education is being affected. Am I really learning anything? Is the socially distant learning environment hurting my education? Should I even be here right now?
Through the ending of my senior year of high school, I realized that my learning had shifted from understanding the material to keeping my grades as As for the rest of the semester. Now here I am as a freshman in college doing the exact same thing.
Instead of understanding concepts in person, I watch my professor (that I’ve never met in person) “teach” them through a screen. This is in no way an attempt to discredit the work professors have been doing, and I am extremely grateful for the work they have put in for this semester. However, instead of being taught how anything, my focus has been on getting the material down in a notebook so I can use it on the online test.
There is no test of knowledge in online school. All of my classes have their tests through an online platform and because they know we can find a way to cheat, they allow notes to be used. If this is the new way of test taking, what are we really learning? How to properly take notes? There are very few fields where that is the only knowledge necessary to succeed, and I’m spending thousands of dollars on a good education. This doesn’t feel like a good way to learn the information that will one day get me a job in the professional world, but what other option do I have?
The most reasonable option would’ve been a gap year. Although if you think about it, a lot of people decided to take that gap year and the 2021 college admissions are going to be extremely competitive because of this. There didn’t seem to be a perfect option between going to college and staying home, and I’m still not sure which would’ve been better (and I guess I’ll never know).
At this point, it’s about making the most of the current situation. It’s up to me to make sure I learn material. Even though college isn’t exactly how I pictured it, I know I’ll learn a lot of life skills through this. This semester is going to be a hard one to push through, but at least I know it can only get better from here.