Man where to begin… The semester was going well. My grades were promising, and I was in a good, motivated state of mind. Nothing could slow me down and I had the world on a string. All that motivation that once filled every nook and cranny of my being, that pushed me forward, was abruptly demolished. SARS-CoV-2 is a son of a bitch.
While overall, I have been able to maintain an adequate level of ability to complete my work and continue to study I have certainly failed compared to my pre-covid abilities. The amount of internal debate it takes just to get up and get started on the work for the day is exhausting. When I can find the nugget of motivation needed to get started, I find it far too easy to become distracted with the constant movement of my world around me. Not to mention, I was clean of gaming for a solid 2 years before this and god damn it if I didn’t re-download my entire steam library since this happened. My sister is now living with us again along with her impulse bought puppy, and my mother works from home accompanied by her behemoth of a dog. These days I find, quite hilariously, that what brings me peace and eases my anxiety is going to work in the Emergency room.
The constant distractions of my home life emphasize to me my need for the more structured learning environment that comes with taking in person classes. I have the self-discipline, motivation, and responsibility to get done what needs to get done in that situation. I discovered years ago that when I attempt to bring the bulk of education into the setting of my home, work just doesn’t seem to get done.
I spent two years at an online school in middle school and weather it was due to my immaturity or youthful adolescent brain, I never could grasp the whole online school thing. Since then I have been a firm believer in in person education. The cooperation and discussion that comes with being physically present for a class has no relative as of now in the online world. The debate that I would have nearly every class with my tablemates was crucial to the concretion of the material in my mind. Additionally, being able to teach others what I knew, and learn from others who knew better than I was about as good as education can get Nevertheless, the entire student body of colleges and universities across the country have been thrust into a situation with a lack of choice.
What has been done I know was brought upon us for our own good. I’d like to believe that all of this is for the betterment of our country but fuck if I’m not angry about it. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining. I mean I know that I am, but I also know that a lot of my fellow students across the country, not just in college but other levels too share the same sentiment. I have sympathy for the parents across the world with children in k-12 who are being expected to take up the reigns of “teacher” and aid their students in their education. Hopefully this will be the push America needs to finally recognize educators as the hero’s that they are and maybe give them the compensation that they deserve.
To focus in more on the chemistry, I believe that just before our education got plunged into the abyss we were on Electrochemistry. I think this will have been the last subject that I am confident I have a solid grasp of. This was the last subject that I was able to cooperate with my fellow classmates on. The last subject I was able to discuss and argue about with people, in person. The last subject that was discussed by Clarissa for the whole class. I think it helps that it was interesting to me, and honestly, I was really looking forward to the lab where we were going to get to make voltaic cells but that hope got just about crushed in a matter of days.
The absolute chore of having to teach myself the remainder of the coursework would have been made worse if I didn’t have anything to test my knowledge. Luckily, Smart works has once again proved its worth to me. Being able to hop on there after reading a chapter and fight through getting the right answers really helps me to fully, or at least as fully as I can, understand some of the content before I start on the tests which have been so graciously given (not a joke, I really do appreciate them.) After working through the smart works homework’s, I like to work through the related problems on the tests and quizzes given to us. This gives me an opportunity to even further my understanding of the content.
If anyone deserves a prize this semester its my tablemate and friend, Robby. He took the initiative to seek out my phone number (not sure where from but I’m glad he did it) and spark up a dialogue about our tests and quizzes. We have been each other’s accountability bros, looking over each other’s work and pointing out differences and why we may have gotten different answers. After some discussion we normally come to one or several conclusions. A: one of us was wrong. B: both of us were wrong. Or C: neither of us were wrong but significant figures wound up giving us different answers. I love the example of one of the kinetics questions that he pointed out a mistake I made on 1 calculation that led the rest of my calculations to be wrong. I fixed that one then fixed the rest, but my answer was off by two decimal points which I pointed out to him. After re-entering his values into his calculator, he realized that he had made a simple error and fixed his work. It is a system that has been invaluable to me in finishing off this semester.
That type of cooperation used to be performed physically, in class but over text and phone is an acceptable alternative that I think everyone should endeavor to have.
About lab, I found that the substitute labs have been an interesting endeavor and one that I appreciate greatly. I had no clue how they were going to continue a chemistry lab online, it seemed inconceivable to me that they would be able to make it work. Luckily the faculty were able to find those online virtual labs, and all is well in the world. Don’t get me wrong, I miss the hell out of getting to go to the physical lab and perform actual experiments to retrieve actual data. This is a nice alternative to get us through to the end though.
Marks Gen Chem II Blog 