Several students in Walled Lake, Michigan, a city about 20 miles northwest of Detroit, said they have been put through the fire when classes moved online due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, leaving them stressed out and voicing their opinions on the workload they have been getting these past few weeks.
College students in Walled Lake, which has about 7,000 residents, said they’re like many students in Michigan who are stressed with the added work this semester has given them.
Tasks at hand
“I feel like in some ways my workload has doubled even though I’m taking the same amount of credits as I usually do,” said, Emily Goins, an Oakland Community College student. “Learning in a remote environment is very different from learning face-to-face, and personally it is a lot more difficult to retain the information when I am teaching it to myself.”
Oakland Community College (OCC) – Highland Lakes Campus located in Waterford has remained closed for months only allowing calls to the offices of OCC. Credit: Lance Limbo
Oakland University student Sophia Borruso agrees.
“I feel the workload for online is too much,” Borruso said. “especially when you have multiple asynchronous classes and can barely find time to do that work in the first place.”
Bittersweet semester
Although keeping college students safe from COVID-19, it makes things bittersweet for seniors in their last semester or last school year.
“It’s a bit sad that it’s my last year and it has to end like this,” said Lauren Lee, an MSU senior. “but at the same time, I’m glad that MSU made a wise decision in keeping so many people safe.”
Students also have voiced their frustrations with the online process.
“I really dislike school being online this semester,” Borruso said. “I feel we should still have at least certain classes in person such as labs.”
With another semester online, it has led to stress.
“I thought that this semester was going to be a similar situation,” Goins said. “However I was wrong, and can say that I often feel overwhelmed by this online learning setting.”
De escalation
The students throughout this school year eventually get stressed these days, and this is how they would de stress in times like this.
“I certainly do get stressed from school at times,” Lee said. “I have my couple sources of rest that I can find and at times it could be simply YouTube, other times it’s hanging with a friend or music, etc.”
Some students are feeling that social media has already been used enough for these situations.
“Unfortunately,” Goins said. “Because I am already on my computer or phone I often turn to social media as an outlet to escape from my school work.”
For more information on how these universities are handling online classes, visit their respective websites here. MSU, OCC, and OU.