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Collected Item: “How am I Supposed to be a Student When the World is Burning Down Around Me? A Student’s Personal Experience”

Give your story a title.

How am I Supposed to be a Student When the World is Burning Down Around Me? A Student’s Personal Experience

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

A photograph of student laptop on a kitchen table

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

I wanted to share the kitchen table's image in my family's house because it has become my workspace and classroom. I have my laptop, water, and food in the image because the virtual college has become a non-stop task. As an undergraduate student transitioning to virtual learning, I have struggled greatly. The weekdays are filled with zoom classes, discussion boards, dozens of essays, and monotonous assignments that feel like busywork. Weekdays and weekends are the same. Universities and professors have maintained high expectations for students even though we are in a pandemic, economic depression, detrimental election year, and significant social justice movement.
Most days, I struggle to want to be the best student I can be when I feel less like a person. It is difficult to get out of bed, especially as hope fades every day with an increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths, people becoming jobless, homeless, and the human rights of so many people being violated. It feels insane sometimes to log on for hours when the world seems to be burning down around me.

Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?

#coveryourfangs, HS6301, virtual learning, mental health, learning from home, coping, struggle, exhausted

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

Camryn Blackmon

Give this story a date.

2020-10-27
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