by Ashley Glasper
When I first enrolled in college, I swore to never take an online class. I was always an “in-person” type of student. I loved being on campus. around other people, and seeing my teacher face-to-face. Even sitting in a classroom that was lecture-style with 100 students was intriguing to me, so imagine my dismay when I was forced to take classes online due to a pandemic that shut down the entire country for months. To make matters worse, this would be my last year in college.
During this time of lockdown, I was convinced that I was going to hate this entire semester, but surprisingly it was not as difficult as I thought it would be. To my surprise, I actually enjoyed the online experience. I enjoyed not having to drive everyday to campus. In fact, if it weren’t for work, or groceries, I didn’t leave the house at all. I had four classes and we all, professors and students alike, had to relearn how to learn, together.
Playwriting class:
In my Playwriting class, we had to learn to act out plays without actually being in the same room. We did our class meetings via Zoom, and all our play readings were done via Zoom. No props, no sets to set up. Everyone sat at their computer trying to imagine the settings. We also had to watch plays via YouTube, or other Zoom meetings. Although the class was out of the ordinary, it was still a great time. My teacher did have to learn to use more technology that she was not used to using, so we all had a learning experience through this.
Editing/Publishing:
Imagine trying to coordinate a literary journal, but never actually meeting to do it. That’s my Editing and Publishing class. I, and a few others were copy editors of the class. As a copy editor, I was to edit all the works we accepted for the current issue of the school’s journal. I had never done any copy editing before, so trying to learn the position, as well as do the duties of it, was a little overwhelming, but I still had fun. I think the craziest part was the zoom calls. We met once a week, and had so much to discuss, we never had the time to do it. Also because of the fact that there were no in-person meetings, almost everything was done via email. This could sometimes become a problem because not everyone checks emails every day. Although things were hectic, the class was very fun, and I learned a lot with technology, as well as learning.
Intro to Journalism:
Now this class was the most interesting class to me because we didn’t meet at all. The professor would put pre-recorded lectures and our homework assignments at the beginning of each week, and we had until that Friday to turn it in. Although I wasn’t used to this method, I found it my favorite way of learning. I liked the pre-recorded lectures because I stop them, and re-watch them to not miss anything. I could also go at my own pace with my homework. I did have to give myself more discipline, and my time management skills increased immensely. I never thought I could love a professor I’d never seen before, but here we are.
TV and Media Studies:
This class is exactly how it sounds, you watch television for this class. I thought this class would be the easiest, but it turned out to be my hardest. You didn’t just watch television, you studied it, learned the ins and outs of television. Intriguing class, but I never thought I could get tired of watching TV. Due to it being online, a lot of the viewing we had to do was done independently. I also had to re-learn group work. This class had a lot of it, the professor did a great job with creating separate google meet meetings for each group to jump in and out of, which I never thought could be done. You had to really tighten up because our group work had to be coordinated to the T through text messages and emailing, something I wasn’t used to having to solely depend on. It was definitely a new learning experience that I didn’t know I needed.
All I can say is because of the pandemic, I love online classes, and I hate that it took until senior year to figure that out.
Oakland Arts Review 