“Staying up late is your body’s worst enemy.”
This is what Xiaoyu “Coco” Zhou said to me in an email, while describing her daily schedule. Digital learning has been difficult for many students, limiting the time they get to interact with their teachers and peers and causing an overall feeling of disconnect. However, for those learning from afar, the flexible nature of online school has opened up new opportunities, allowing them to learn from anywhere, though they do encounter challenges.
For Zhou, a senior, digital learning makes it possible to stay with her family in Qingdao, China, but attending class now means overcoming a 13-hour time difference. She begins first period at 10 p.m., and finishes up at 2:45 a.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays and 4:45 a.m. on Mondays and Thursdays.
“It was so hard, my first time studying math from 4-5 a.m. Every Monday and Thursday, after the end of the class, I need almost one hour for my brain to stop thinking so I can sleep,” she said. “It is affecting my work and my health.”
Google is blocked in China, so Zhou has to use a VPN, and she sometimes faces complications taking tests and running certain programs because she can’t use a school Chromebook. Despite this, she has found advantages to using Google Meet over a physical classroom.
“Except for the time difference, I actually love the online classes,” Zhou said. “Google Meet has English closed captioning, and that saves my poor English listening and helps me understand what they are talking about. When I was at school, if I couldn’t understand what the teacher was talking about, I had to secretly take a photo and then go home and study it myself. But now online classes let me skip the process.”
For junior Eve Bryner, digital learning has also opened up unique opportunities. She goes up to Ann Arbor, Mich. with her family every summer, but this year, after weighing the fewer cases in Michigan, they decided to extend their stay into the fall, returning six weeks after the start of online school.
“I could see my friends in Michigan. And also, it was a change of scenery which is really nice,” Bryner said. “I mean, I missed seeing my friends here, and if I had been in Chapel Hill, maybe I would have met up with some friends to study together. But I feel, overall, I wasn’t really missing out on anything because everything was virtual.”
Staying in Michigan also allowed Bryner to continue her job as a lifeguard, logging into class or doing schoolwork during breaks along with other local students.
“It was definitely a weird experience to have everyone just doing schoolwork while lifeguarding, which is more of a summer thing,” she said. “I would log into my meetings and I’d be outdoors with a mask on, and my teachers or other classmates would be like, ‘Oh, where are you,’ and I would say I was in Michigan and I was working as a lifeguard, and I guess they were all surprised about it at first. They were like, ‘Oh, that’s kind of weird, but also kind of cool.’”
Photo courtesy of hangglide/Flickr
