Back home in the suburbs, college students face uncertainties over online learning
First came the excitement about a prolonged vacation. Then reality set in.
How is online learning going to play out, especially for classes that require hands-on work? What about group presentations? How will I handle it all? Will my grades suffer?
Those are some of the questions troubling 20-year-old Justin Ethithara of Des Plaines and other suburban college students whose schools have closed or canceled in-person classes in the face of the new coronavirus outbreak.
Their lives upended, students are finding themselves back home in the suburbs, with no guarantees about when life will go back to normal.
Ethithara, a sophomore at Marquette University in Milwaukee, was on spring break last week when he learned the time off would be extended by a week and after that he'd continue classes online until April 10.
Marquette students could go back to school only during the day Sunday to pick up their belongings.
"At first I was super excited because I loved the idea of having an extended spring break, but then I realized what was going to happen," he said. "I know it's really hard to focus here at home. Mentally, I want to be on spring break. Now, I am kind of worried my grades are going to kind of slip down."
Michigan State University student Erika Christensen came back to her hometown of Naperville on March 12, a day after students were told all classes would be held online until April 20. No in-person meetings would be permitted in the meantime.
Students are not required to leave campus, but were strongly encouraged to do so. Christensen, a computer science major, had a cold, so she figured she'd head home and leave the dorm room to her roommate, a native of Wyoming who was planning to stay.
Christensen said she's taken some online classes previously, but not an entire semester load.
"You have to tell yourself, 'I'm not going to jeopardize my grade just because I'm home,'" she said. "You want to be able to say, 'I know this material.'"
Madison Knott of Elgin, a 19-year-old sophomore at Indiana University, was scheduled to go on spring break Monday. Students were informed last week the school would close and they could not return to campus until April 6, she said.
Starting March 23, classes will take place online via web conferencing, she said. The move was not unexpected, particularly after Ohio State University and others announced closures, Knott said.
Despite having taken several classes online in the past, Knott is worried about how she will tackle that now. She's an interior design major and only two of her five classes are in lecture format, she said. The other three are studio or lab classes, relying on in-person work such as 3-D designs, paper making and the like.
"I'm more worried about my grades," Knott said. "Lectures are a lot easier, you watch and take notes. It's a lot harder when you have lab."
Still, some have it worse, she said, like some fellow students who went back to California and will have to start some classes at 5 a.m., which is 8 a.m. in Indiana.
Ashia Walker, 19, of Elgin, said she plans to come home from Loyola University Chicago early this week.
The sophomore economics major was shocked to find out March 5 that the campus would be closing and students had to pack and be out by Thursday. She's never taken online classes and has lots of uncertainties about how that will happen.
"Many of the professors were kind of confused about what mode they would go with. Do they do PowerPoint and do voice-overs, or have a video and send it out so we could watch it anytime?"
But she, too, is keeping things in perspective. It's an inconvenience to have to move out of her dorm room but international students have it much worse, she said, having to figure out if they can go home or where to stay otherwise.
There are other things the students will miss out on.
Christensen is in the marching band at Michigan State and sings with the women's Glee Club, but all performances have been canceled, all the more disappointing because the school was celebrating its 150th anniversary of the band program, she said.
"A lot of us are really bummed, but we also keep a sense of humor about it," she said.
Ethithara had been choreographing a dance for the annual Indian Student Association show in about two weeks, while also working with others to finish a robotic arm by the end of the semester.
Walker isn't sure if she can keep her work-study job as an administrative aide for the Archdiocese of Chicago. Loyola University won't pay her salary while the school is closed, she said. The archdiocese offered to pay her, but she's not sure about the scheduling and format of her online classes, and whether she can tackle the commute to Chicago, she said.
The students did agree about one thing: they are not too concerned about being sickened by COVID-19.
Knott and her parents planned to leave Saturday for spring break in Arizona, where they were to meet relatives from Iowa. She did have some worry about her grandparents in Elgin, knowing the disease is more serious for older people, she said.
"I am not that worried about it because it doesn't really affect younger people," Ethithara said. "You can't really do anything about it except being careful ourselves - and hoping for the best."