So this week was the first week back at school. That was an interesting time, I must say. This week, I just wanted to share my experiences with my first week back and this weird time navigating a worldwide pandemic and college classes.
Classes started on Monday, August 24th, and this first day of school was not like past first days. I didn’t try to dress cute or make myself look presentable which was honestly refreshing but also kind of disappointing. It made the day feel really different. Monday was a horribly busy day. I had five classes, cell biology, anatomy, a business class regarding the legal and ethical issues of business, macroeconomics, and my pre-thesis class. I basically sat at my table for five hours straight after I had breakfast and cleaned up and that was the worst decision of my life. After those five hours of classes and exploring the class pages and syllabi, I had lunch, and then it was time for more class work. I ended my extreme first day of classes with a pre-thesis meeting and then after that hour I crashed. My sister and I ordered Noodles and Company for dinner that night as a celebratory dinner and as a way of saying, “Yay we did it! We survived the first day of classes!” It was a good dinner and if you’ve never had caulifloodles, I highly recommend you look them up and then try them. 🙂
My second day of classes was a breeze. I had my online session for cell bio lab and then online lab for my anatomy class. For my cell bio lab we have an online portion and an in-person portion. I alternate when I meet in person every other week. When I meet in-person, I’m required to wear a face mask in addition to a mask which seems a bit excessive, but I understand the precaution, so I will do what I can to keep myself and others safe! For my anatomy class, we have a virtual dissection software that we use to understand and see all of the structures we need to look at. I was hesitant about an online anatomy course at first but I actually love the professor that does our lectures and the software we use for virtual dissection is actually pretty cool. That was basically all I had Tuesday, so I had a chance to do some reading for my econ class and was done with my work around 2 pm.
Wednesday, I had my cell bio, anatomy, business, and econ classes. It was a pretty mild day but wowza four classes in one day is a lot of work. I can handle it, but it’s just a lot of information to take in within a few hours. By Wednesday, I discovered that I really liked my business class. It has been very different from any other class I’ve taken so far and I really like how my professors are treating the course as a way of obtaining life skills as opposed to an actual academic course. Yes, I still get graded for the work I do, and there are still assignments and quizzes, but the emphasis is more on building the skills needed to run a business.
Thursday, the only true class I was the first-year honors seminar recitation that I teach. It was exciting to meet my students in person. It was just a very strange environment though. The tables were all so spread apart and it was odd communicating with people and trying to be enthusiastic and share my excitement for the honors program with a mask on. It was just a bit strange.
And then the last day of the school week, Friday!! Friday was another big day of many classes, those classes being cell bio, anatomy, my business class, and econ recitation. My econ recitation was an in-person class and that was interesting. For a class that was supposed to have thirty students in it, we were put in a decently sized lecture hall. All of the rows had tape blocking off all seats except one to enforce social distancing. Obviously we were required to wear masks. My TA basically just talked about how the semester is going to run but I found it most interesting that my TA found it strange for us to be meeting in-person. Our lectures for that course are asynchronous so it seems a bit weird for us to have in-person recitations, but I’m just going to go with the flow and see what happens.
It was a strange first week of classes but it was also good in many ways. It was filled with a lot of mask wearing and hand washing but it was also filled with fun and I was especially happy to see a bunch of my friends again. Hopefully people make good and smart decisions and allow us to stay on campus until Thanksgiving break. Stay healthy, stay safe, and I’ll see you next Sunday!