Study from Home: Good or Bad?

 

The pandemic has moved all our work to the online platform. It has been the same with students. Most of the students in India were introduced to the online mode of education for the first time. The platform was new, the procedures were new. Studying from home was also new. We had tuitions, but to have the whole class online, sitting at one place for the whole time that too always in front of the camera was weird. The pressure on the body and eyes was too much to handle. But as students, we are accustomed to being experimented on. Aren’t we?

Online education is less of an effort- that is what the world thinks. There is no travel time, there is less adhering to a strict hostel rule. They just have to wake up and do basic chores and sit to attend class. But it involves other works which we did not have previously. For example, some of us have to cook breakfast and lunch for the family, we have to take care of the elderly as well. It was done by someone else in the past- either a member of the family or domestic help, whose entry has been restricted due to Covid-19. Then, we have to sit at one place for the whole day, without much movement. It causes terrible pain in the back and the body. And to add to it, the pressure that it puts upon the eye is too much. My daily screen time goes up to 11 hours due to classes, revisiting the classes, and the assignments.

The short-term issues are that it makes one’s eyes red, it releases water and the strain is felt every time we want to take a rest by closing our eyes. The long-term effects can be worse.
We also lose out on many things in this form. The emotional bonding amongst students is best done when they meet each other in person, not just virtually. The major discussions, of politics and theories, of interests and family, of the likeness and everything apart from work, takes place outside the classroom. Despite all efforts, we aren’t able to discuss anything outside academics and hence, the bond between classmates isn’t that personal. Some may argue it is not needed, but I believe it is critical.

The misunderstanding of that the family has with regards to these online classes is also an issue. A lot of them take it to be like paying YouTube videos, where one doesn’t have to constantly sit and study, but just watch them. They do not value it at the same level as they value an offline class or tuition. They infact dismiss the effort, by saying that it anyways is just a video, hence that shouldn’t add to our strain. They give us additional household work. The academicians behave the same way as well. They do think that since students are at their home, they can be lauded with extra assignments, not thinking about the screen time that they will incur. All of these ends up troubling the students.

Because of the workload, finding a breathing space is difficult for us students. Apart from these issues, finding a good place to sit and attend classes and the network issues add to the trouble. We talk of empathy and mental health, but maybe we should give workshops to institutions and parents.