COVID-19 reflection

Title

COVID-19 reflection

Description

This was written as an assignment for Dr. Cheryl Dudasik-Wiggs' ENGL 1100 Foundations of College Writing in Spring 2021.

Coverage

Greenville, North Carolina

Creator

Glover, Nadia

Date

2021-04-18

extracted text

COVID-19

Nadia Glover
Department of English, East Carolina University
ENGL 1100 Foundations of College Writing
Dr. Cheryl Dudasik-Wiggs
Spring 2021

COVID-19

Covid began in December of 2019. In December of 2019, I was in the middle of my
senior season of basketball, and I had just started volunteering at the Nursing Home with my
Nursing Fundamentals class. We were only able to go three consecutive days, then a resident had
gotten sick and they were not allowed to have visitors of any type, so we just used the times that
we were supposed to be at the nursing home, as extra study hours. As my class and I had to take
our CNA tests soon. Though, Covid did not have much of an impact on my basketball season
because the disease was not as serious at the time. We continued with school and finished out the
year.
Things all went downhill right near graduation, graduation was pushed back to July when
we were actually supposed to graduate in May. So instead of graduation, we had a parade, where
all of the seniors just rode through and got recognition for our acheievment. At my school they
were going to give it time to see if the rates of Covid went down enough for us to have a real
graduation, of course they did not. So, in July I had to graduate in the auditorium alone, no other
students, with just six of my family members in the audience. After graduation, Covid rates were
still rising and my parents believed it was best for me and my sister to stay at home unless we
absolutely needed to leave, or if we were going to go out, it was not with many people. So the
majority of my summer I was at home, or not really doing anything too exciting.
In August of 2020, I began my first semester here at ECU. At first I had thought that I
was going to have a great semester, we were going to classes in person, we were able to go out
on the weekends to parties and events, everything was how it should be. Then one morning I
woke up and got notifications about a few different breakouts of Covid in different places on

COVID-19
campus. They quarantined those people, but I guess it did not work 100%. Little do I know, two
weeks after I had just moved to Greenville, I am packing my stuff back in the car going back
home. We started taking our college courses online, which makes no sense to me considering we
still pay full tuition but we are not experiencing the full college experience.
Personally, I am a hands-on learner. I am going to learn or remember something better, if
I do it or if I can physically see what is happening rather than just listening to someone speak on
the subject. Even in school for exams, if we had the option to take them out of the book or on the
computer, I would choose out of the book over the computer.
Taking college courses online is hard and I feel like our professors do not realize that.
Yes we are like the “generation of technology”, but how am I going to earn a Nursing Degree
online? I would not trust anyone to do any type of procedures on me, if I knew they had no
experience and they just watched some videos online. Throughout all of my years of education,
most of my teachers, before the class started, I would have an assignment that is something about
my teacher trying to get to know me, about me, how I learn best, what I like to do in class, what
they could do to become a better teacher, what type of teachers are not good teachers. My
highschool teachers did preach that college is not the same as highschool, I am not sure if that is
part of it but I feel like that builds a better connection between the teacher and student for the
benefit of the teacher and student.
I do understand that professors in college have many more students but if we are taking
classes online, I believe our teachers should be more lenient and understanding that this is a
drastic change not only for them, but us too. It is very different and has taken some time to get
used to, sometimes I still forget to take a mask when I go places.

COVID-19
I feel like being a student during this pandemic is challenging for me, mainly because I
am a hands-on learner, but I have talked to many of my friends that also go to ECU and they said
they hate online classes. The upperclassmen I have talked to have told me that the previous years
were so much better. I believe it, and I hope that at least by next semester we can at least return
to fully back in person for the whole semester. We have been going through this pandemic for
way too long and I do not want my whole four years of college to be taken online.

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