{"id":20794,"date":"2021-03-17T07:00:04","date_gmt":"2021-03-17T14:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=20794"},"modified":"2021-03-17T07:39:11","modified_gmt":"2021-03-17T14:39:11","slug":"student-editors-letter-conflicted-thoughts-about-september","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2021\/03\/17\/student-editors-letter-conflicted-thoughts-about-september\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Editor\u2019s Letter: Conflicted thoughts about September"},"content":{"rendered":"

On March 8, when provincial health officer Bonnie Henry said that post-secondary institutions can and should prepare for a full return to in-person learning in September, I was a bit put out. I was conflicted.<\/p>\n

I checked my sources, did some digging to make sure this was, in fact, what she had said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true. It\u2019s time for students to get back to campus. We\u2019re all feeling it. It\u2019s just time. Right? Simple. No, it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

Sure, I miss Camosun. I miss smiling faces, and lots of spaces; I miss all the people in hallways, seeing stacks of textbooks spread out over picnic tables in the courtyard, and watching that one slightly disheveled individual who always shows up late to class. But in order for us to get in a room with 30 other people, we need to trust them. It\u2019s fact, and it\u2019s instinct.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun’s Interurban campus during COVID-19 (file photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aside from the logistics of a return to campus and the vaccine rollout, there\u2019s now COVID-19 variants to be concerned about, not to mention trying to figure out what students should do when that perpetually runny nose and cough returns in the fall.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the little matter of our trust in other people being completely shattered over the past year.<\/p>\n

Day in and day out, we\u2019ve been told that COVID-19 will kill us. We\u2019ve been told to stay apart, that other people are hosts and that isolation is good. I want to know how we\u2019re going to trust each other again, and I want to know what class sizes at Camosun will be. I also want to know if the college is going to pay, say, three more instructors to teach to account for smaller class sizes, because I don\u2019t think anyone can imagine classrooms stuffed full of students at this point. Granted, we couldn\u2019t ever have imagined any of this, so anything is possible.<\/p>\n

At best, students are nervous about returning. At worst, students don\u2019t want to go to campus. Because of the virus, yes, but also because of something else we\u2019ve learned over the past year: it\u2019s a waste of time, to some extent. Up at 7 am, shower, eat, get changed, pack a lunch, drive up to school; pay for parking, climb stairs, and arrive at class vaguely sweaty, anxious, and most definitely late. Oh, and that lunch you packed? You forgot it, but you can pay too much for some egg-like mush if you like.<\/p>\n

Online learning allows you to use that morning rush time to study, go for a run, or sleep.<\/p>\n

Either way, us students have to take what we get. If registration opened in two weeks for the fall semester and online options filled up fast, there wouldn\u2019t be much we could do, because\u2014as this pandemic has proven\u2014one way or another, we need an education. But there\u2019s an opportunity here for the college, instructors, and students to get the best of both worlds. Enough online options and enough in-person options for those disciplines that truly suffer online could result in a semester unlike any other as far as student success rates.<\/p>\n

Of the six post-secondary students I\u2019ve spoken to about this, three have implied they want a mix of online and in-person options in the fall, one has said she can\u2019t learn online, and two have said they won\u2019t return to campus until it\u2019s completely normal again (see you in 2055).<\/p>\n

It comes down to students and staff having the opportunity to pick a learning or teaching style that works for them. A full return to campus without learning from some new possibilities brought on by the pandemic would be a mistake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On March 8, when provincial health officer Bonnie Henry said that post-secondary institutions can and should prepare for a full return to in-person learning in September, I was a bit put out. I was conflicted. I checked my sources, did some digging to make sure this was, in fact, what she had said. It\u2019s true. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-views"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20795,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20794\/revisions\/20795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}