Zheqi Wang ’21 (Photograph: Mr. Michael Aldridge)
The Covid-19 pandemic led me to taking online class this year as I remain in China. As we all know online class is not a good way for students to study: some students will not pay attention to their classes, the online classes are not high quality because of the lagging, and the homework problem also leads to students to have less than a high–quality learning experience. Take me for example. The most difficult things for me regarding online class are the different time zones and unreliable internet.
Firstly, different time zones make me hard to concentrate on classes, especially during the midnight. My journalism class starts at 1:20pm Lake Placid time, but when I log in to that class it is 2:20am at home. For the first two weeks, I was trying to switch my biological clock to U.S. time. I “stay up late” after the school days and sleep during my daytime. Preparing a cup of coffee or tea at the begging of the class. When I was trying to switch my biological clock, it’s hard to fall sleep, because the noise from the traffic jams outside and the ambient noise is loud. But, luckily, I generally overcome the noise and fall sleep.
The other factor is the internet problem. Firstly, I need to buy a Virtual Private Network (VPN) from a company that can create a new IP address, so I cannot buy the VPN from Apple Store or any websites. Secondly, if I connect the VPN the Wi-Fi signal will be weak, which sometimes leads to live class lagging. If its lagging when teachers are talking about important information, I need to spend time to re-watch the recorded classes. Additionally, if I need to do the homework, which might be watching a movie first and answering the questions, I need to spend twice as much time on homework.
Thus, online class is not a good choice for me, but that is the only way to study right now.
