I am actually investing myself in something productive than meaninglessly scrolling through social media: Donita, DAIICT

These are first-hand student accounts on how our young population is managing to keep their exam prep or college course work going from the confines of their homes. In case you want to share your lockdown study experience, write to us at publish@shiksha.com.

We all are going through a tough time and I wish well being and health to all. Be safe and stay at your home. Talking about the lockdown and the academics, many faculty members have engaged themselves in delivering online lectures to us. This obviously is a nice attempt to engage students and expedite the procedure of completion of this semester. This kind of activity is appreciated by the students too. The faculties are sharing online sources like YouTube links, research papers, courses offered by Udacity and many more to learn the subject in a better way. We can call it the online semester and you may think it’s optional, well, it’s kind of not. There are constant zoom meetings and project deadlines to be met. There are virtual lectures and doubt solving sessions and submissions and not what. However, on the brighter side, all of this is done by sitting casually at home, eating mom-cooked food. Online learning puts your time management skills at test. You may procrastinate your job for the whole day or you might get 5 extra things done.

Honestly, I am enjoying online learning more than face to face classroom learning. Mainly due to the following reasons:

• Flexible Schedule

Since all the information is stored and can be accessed at any time according to our preference, students have the liberty to prioritize their learning. In my case, I am focussing more on projects, development and competitive coding. I have the video lectures downloaded and can study them whenever the need be. You may think this will lead to procrastination. Well, it’s up to you and how you manage your time. You can really focus on the subject that interests you. It may be compulsory to attend online classes too but they are not as frequent as they used to be and hence there is more flexibility.

• Interaction with Faculty

It is obvious that student-instructor time increases due to online learning. You tend to ask more doubts or tell him/her about progress. Moreover, this is a good thing. The same might happen in regular classrooms too but my college classroom has close to 250 students and not many communicate with the professor on a daily basis. Also, my communication skills have improved. Currently, I am writing 5 emails per day to the faculties and my peers for numerous reasons and that has surely taught me how to put forward my point to a superior and defend my arguments.

• Control over the learning environment

This is the most important reason for preferring online learning. You can sit on a bed, in a balcony, study room, on the dining table, anywhere! No fear of sitting on the first row and looking right in the eye of the professor or sitting on the last bench and getting caught sleeping. You can even eat while your professor is giving a lecture. What can be more amazing than that! Of course, there are times when professionalism is needed.

The offline classes have their own advantages:

• No matter how boring a lecture might be, how would you make fun of your friends without being in an actual classroom? How would you roast your friends and discuss the tormenting course curriculum?
• I miss bunking my lectures and then worrying about attendance. I miss my campus, canteen, lecture hall and benches excessively much.
• Many times, I find it easier to concentrate when the professor is physically present. You know someone is looking or someone might question you any moment so you are more vigilant. More often than not it is easier for a professor to keep track of the students paying attention in an offline classroom compared to the online classrooms.
• When there are no restrictions, we lose track. You can try very hard to maintain a schedule but there will come a point when you would need a break. Self-motivation is the key. You need to educate yourself.

However, it all depends on person to person and subject to subject. Whether you are learning something online or offline, you must know how to learn. It would be difficult to decide which method should be opted permanently because both the methods have their own pros and cons.

This situation is surely going to intensify the importance of digital India.

Suddenly I seem to have adjusted to this quarantine world, there are tons of hackathons to participate and contribute towards launching solutions to fight COVID-19. I am learning to do my work without being dependent on someone else. My creativity is coming out and I am spending some time on my hobbies. I used to draw and paint as a kid but due to time absorbing routine, I had stopped it.

Now, I spend more than 4 hours a week on painting. Continuing my hobby relaxes my brain and gives me a break from monotony. Also, there are game nights with my family. The old board games were covered with dust in the cupboard as no one came out of their phone screens. This gave me the chance to enjoy and laugh together as a family. I believe that we spend quality family time now. It felt so great when mom and I would team up to defeat my dad in a game of cards. There are so many hilarious incidents and we are recreating wonderful memories together.

I am actually investing myself in something productive than meaninglessly scrolling through social media. This was a break we all needed, to reconnect not only with our loved ones but also with ourselves.

Obviously, there is not much free time given the final exams and submissions and deadlines. Our college has consoled us saying the academic activities would begin from 1st June and the semester would be concluded by announcing the result by mid-July. The in-between period will be used for conducting lectures, labs, tutorials, end-semester examinations on a ‘fast-paced’ mode. The revised academic calendar will be announced and there will be a short break to complete internship/ research/project before starting the next semester. My family is more invested in knowing the decisions made by the university authorities.

Since I have shared my college incidents, they are aware of the effectiveness and what it would take to pressurize the authorities to make student-friendly decisions. There are endless stories that I hear from my parents about their time as students. Now we share a stronger bond and exchange incidents more often. Moreover, the college placements are coming up and I keep myself busy building my resume, practising competitive coding and learning new things.

About the Author:

Donika Juthani is pursuing BTech in ICT (Information and Communication Technology) from DAIICT. She is also an upcoming summer intern at Goldman Sachs. Donika is an ML (Machine Learning) enthusiast and skilled in Python, HTML, CSS, and MySQL. She is a member of the programming club at DAIICT and responsible for organizing SisCode, an initiative to motivate and guide female students in competitive programming.