By Alec Horne
Early on during the pandemic, COVID-19 forced students to take their classes online. But it was not right that students had to pay full tuition when they weren’t getting the full educational experience.
Overall, I don’t believe students got the best quality education from distance learning, even though that is what we paid for.
Zoom classes were not super hard for me during my first full semester at Long Beach State. At first, distance learning was nice. I could stay home, sit upright in my bed during class and leave my phone face down.
However, the second semester was more difficult.
As time went on, my bed felt more comfortable–sitting upright turned into laying down, my phone was always in my hand, I couldn’t focus, and my grades got worse.
I had taken a lot of online classes during my time at Gavilan College before I transferred to CSULB, and I got through them with no problems.
However, during my first year at CSULB, I had to take all of my classes online because of the pandemic, even classes such as math and English where I knew I would struggle to understand the material.
Educators did what they could to adapt their in-person lessons to online. A lot of classes that were two days a week in person, transitioned to having lessons one day a week online. This adaptation hurt me because I would never participate in the self guided lessons we were supposed to do.
I found myself not being able to focus during most of my classes because I had so many distractions at home, like my dog who loved to come up to my room during class and bark at my door until I let him in.
Taking classes online was hard for everyone. My friends told me they had trouble keeping up in their classes and had to spend a lot of time outside of class to catch up or even stay on track.
Students also still had to pay hefty prices for things like technology, software and textbooks. I had to pay for all of these things since my classes required them, and they were extremely pricey.
One day, my computer stopped working while I was doing an assignment that was due the next day. I couldn’t go anywhere else to use a different computer and was not aware that CSULB was offering technology loans, so I had to turn in the half-done assignment and take half-credit even though I had every intention of finishing it.
There are still classes being held online for the spring 2022 semester. Because of these problems, I do not plan on taking them.
This fall, I’ve had my best semester of school in a while because I came to campus to take in-person classes.
I feel much better about attending CSULB when I’m able to attend classes on campus because it’s easier for me to focus and learn.
