Happy September??? Not sure when we got here. In case you have been living a life of solitude in the mountains and don’t know what’s been going on the past few months due to the pandemic things have been closed and many schools have resorted to online classes for the semester.

I am lucky and my school has decided to open its doors to both some in-person classes and on-campus living. I am so thankful that my school is not doing all online classes. I found out last semester that I am not an online learner, I can’t do it, it was bad. Plus it didn’t help to be in a different time zone than my teachers. (5 am classes 10/10 do NOT recommend)

So when my school announced they were opening their doors for my LAST semester of college I was ecstatic. A week ago I flew across the country to move into my dorm and start the semester. (If you want to see my dorm room tour go check out my saved highlight on my Instagram @thoughtsanddaisies)

While moving in and setting up a dorm felt normal the week started and everything I was used to had to be adapted. My college has put in place a ton of safety protocols to keep us all safe, like wearing masks indoors, but it does make life on campus very different from the past few years. For one they have taken away a ton of seating to encourage social distancing and switched up dining completely. Which wouldn’t be so bad if their way to do that did not include your meal now being served in the brown paper trays you normally use for things like fries. It is one of my biggest complaints. I am sorry but a paper boat of pasta is in NO WAY a full meal. If I am still hungry after that I can’t imagine how the boys are feeling.

But I can’t totally complain because they turned one of the dining spaces into a sandwich place that now serves sandwiches with Boar’s Head meat and they are all specialty sandwiches. So far they are the bomb.com and the one thing I have no conflicts with. 

They also moved tables out and around from the dining halls so there are fewer places to sit and each table has chairs spread six feet apart. They did the same thing outside by placing tables under a tent and limiting the chairs. So no matter where you go you kind of feel like you need to yell to have whoever you are sitting with hear you.

Classrooms have been changed with only up to 10 or 15 people allowed in a class depending on the size of the classroom space used. This means if your class is over that you officially hit the hybrid class stage. Out of the five classes, I have two fully online with the other three being hybrids meaning I go to class in person once a week and the rest online. It is only half bad, I just really hate online classes. To the people who do online classes al the time, you must have superpowers because I don’t know how you do it. Plus the fact that online means I am just zooming into class and man does technology suck!

The first day of my accent/dialect class the sound didn’t work meaning I just watched my teacher motion towards us when she spoke after addressing the people in the class but we had no idea what she was saying because she was wearing a mask so we couldn’t even try to read her lips. We tried to tell her and she proceeded to tell us to mute our mics via the chat room. Day one felt like a complete fail in that moment.  

Also, attempting to learn how to use a computer software when the camera is so far away from the screen being used to show and I have to guess what my teacher is clicking on… not fun. 

The plus side of everything going on is half the week I don’t even have to get ready for class until five minutes before because all I have to do is log on. I scheduled the easiest schedule of classes ever for my last semester. I had to add a class for fun because I didn’t have enough classes left to take to be a full-time student. My earliest class is 10:50 am and my latest is at 3. I am coasting through, and sometimes I feel I have too much free time…

(Although I don’t look like this because my pool is sadly at home)

The suckiest thing about all of this is the interaction with your classmates that you normally have isn’t there. Instead of walking into the theater department to see all these people hanging out and chatting it’s now dead silent because all the chairs are gone and no one is in there. It is a bit eerie. You can’t sit next to your friends in class and it really sucks to not be able to tell how people are based on their facial expressions. I love human interaction which made the past five months of sitting at home difficult and being at school and still not totally getting it is a pain. But I am so glad to be at school and get to hang out with my roommate and do things like a photo shoot for her and the long furby she made. 

Overall week one has been better than expected in some aspects and worse in others but I made it through and I am just taking it all in day by day and trying to figure out how to navigate this hybrid version of school.

 

What are some things you would like me to make a post about? School? Online learning? Fashion, music, books? Let me know in the comments what you would like to see!

Posts you might like:

Back to School- First Week of College

Everyday Outfits for School

What I Learned My First Year of College

 

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