April 20, 2020
One month ago, Harvard students transitioned to remote learning. Over this time, we have regularly asked the Bok Center’s undergraduate fellows to reflect on their experiences with online courses and with learning in new environments. Last week, we asked students to weigh in on the ways in which learning has changed over the past month. Below, and on this blog, we share reflections from undergraduates who work with the Bok Center’s Learning Lab. We will continue to collect and share students’ stories of remote learning in upcoming news posts.
From Sophie, a junior concentrating in History and Literature:
This is an interesting week for me to fill out this reflection, because from Monday morning to about an hour ago (Wednesday morning) my family had no WiFi, and no power for most of that time as well, because a massive tree fell in our yard Monday morning and took out an entire telephone pole. Conveniently enough, this happened the day my Junior Paper for History & Literature (the biggest assignment of the year for my concentration) was due—so it led to hours of panicked attempts to finish editing & uploading a thirty page word doc to Canvas via data & spotty service on my phone, which was quickly running out of battery. I got it in a whopping two minutes before the deadline, and this was only possible because I had data and service—however spotty. Those two days partially off the grid definitely forced me to reflect on one of the primary challenges to learning remotely: how heavily it relies on infrastructure that many families and parts of the country & world don’t have or could easily lose. My teachers were super understanding for the past two days, but they were only two days—any more time and I would’ve lost income from work and fallen steadily behind in class.
The biggest innovation I’ve tried to incorporate into my life is opening up steady and consistent lines of communication with classmates & friends (& teachers, when needed!) in order to connect on shared difficulties and find solutions. Because so many of us are experiencing similar emotional responses, it’s been super helpful to hear from friends about how they’re dealing with those feelings.
Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash