[FFAFF]

I don't know how to begin this, so I just will.


I go to a major American university. When the pandemic hit, we, thankfully, took it very seriously and locked down quickly and we locked down hard. We transitioned to online learning quickly, and I couldn't have asked for better management and policy from our school - particularly in the absence of any higher leadership.

I just finished my junior fall semester under lockdown. This my second batch of courses under quarantine, and I'm a bit miffed at the state of things right now.

My university experience did not start out great - to summarize it, it was a lot of rude staff, loneliness, and, most damningly, a lot of prerequisite courses that I felt very frustrated about taking before I could get to my actual major. Thankfully, most of that has subsided - I'm in my degree program now, and I'm making good progress towards it.

I like class. I was a good student in school, and I value my education very highly in my own life. Academic routine was something I was very well-adjusted to, and it was something I was proud of.

I can safely say I've retained almost nothing from my courses this semester, and I hate it. I've been scraping by with barely-passing grades - but not for lack of trying. I'm genuinely engaged and interested in the material we're learning; I'm at the point where I'm really getting into the meat-and-potatoes of my major and I really try to keep myself afloat, but I just can't work like this.

I practically collapsed and couldn't get myself to do anything from the week of the election to Thanksgiving break, and when that finally hit, I had the energy to work hard again only to find that I had scarcely two weeks in the semester left.

On a more positive note - I've elected to purchase and read my course's textbook alongside a few other books covering the material over the break. It's genuinely cool stuff, I just wish I could do this semester over with an actual class again.

Does anyone else feel like this right now? I feel like I've retained nothing through this semester and it genuinely upsets me to my core. There was a version of right now where I would've actually just finished a semester of school and come away smarter and proud of my work, and I feel like that was stolen right beneath me by this damned stupid virus and the failure of people that are supposed to protect us from doing what they're paid to.